|
|
Put the Power of Sunshine in the Palm of Your Hand with Vitamin
D
Vitamin D will save your bones
Have you ever noticed how much better you feel after walking in the sun? It can
brighten your spirits, give you a great tan, and… it may just save your life.
Vitamin D is essential.
We used to get all the sun we wanted. Our ancestors lived in the sun for
millions of years. They lived outdoors every moment of their lives and got all
vitamin D they needed.
But around the turn of the century, things changed. It started with the
invention of the light bulb. The industrial revolution soon followed, and
people started migrating to the cities and working indoors. The natural proces
of making vitamin D from the sun stopped.
This migration indoors altered our native relationship with the sun forever.
And, while the world around us may have changed, your genetic makeup hasn’t.
You still need sunlight and Vitamin D to stay healthy and prevent disease.
Dr. Sears' PRIMAL FORCE Vitamin D3 contains 5,000 I.U. of Vitamin D. You'd need
to drink 50 glasses of whole milk each day to obtain the same amount of
powerful health benefits!
Here is a very important article from
Al Sears, MD
January 25, 2011
Would you use a drug that gives you the problem it’s supposed to prevent?
Well, that’s exactly what’s going on with the new osteoporosis drugs.
Fosomax, Boniva, Reclast, Actonel... these medications are supposed to help stop
you from getting bone fractures as you get older. But we now have evidence that
they cause bone breaks.
Researchers studied women taking these medications – called bisphosphonates – who
experienced some sort of fracture. Over 65 percent had the same rare fracture in
the same area of their thigh bones. And these were the women who had been on the
drugs for the longest periods.1
Plus they’ve also found that if you’re on the drugs for a long time and you do get
a bone break, you’ll heal very slowly. Sometimes it can take two years!
It’s another example of how modern medicine doesn’t learn from its mistakes. They
refuse to take a whole-body approach to healing. Instead they opt to treat
individual symptoms with drugs designed only for those symptoms.
And bone density drugs are a perfect example of this. I’ll tell you how they work
in a moment, but first I want to tell you a little bit about how your body makes
bone…
Your bones have cells called osteoclasts. Their job is to remove old bone tissue.
This allows the bone to grow strong because other cells called osteoblasts then
rebuild the bone.
With osteoporosis and other bone diseases, there is an imbalance … either your
osteoblasts aren’t making new cells fast enough, or osteoclasts are removing too
much tissue.
So drug companies came up with a way to stop osteoclasts from removing the old
tissue, which also artificially increases your bone density: bisphosphonate
drugs.
There are two problems with this.
1. By keeping your old bone tissue, you increase bone mass but make bones act
older.
2. The drugs do the job by poisoning your osteoclast cells.
What happens is that you take the medicine, the osteoclasts absorb it, and it
poisons the osteoclast cells by cutting off their blood supply. The cells then
either work very slowly or die.
Because they don’t take away the old tissue, your bones become denser. But they’re
dense with old tissue. And the osteoblasts can’t make new tissue if the old tissue
is still there.
After a while, the old-bone tissue becomes brittle and fragile, like glass, because
it’s not as strong as the newer bone that would have formed without the drugs.
You end up with technically “dense” but weak bones that can fracture.
The other thing that can happen that most people don’t know about is osteonecrosis.
This is what happens when your bones are too dense with old tissue. There’s not
enough space in the inner bone for your bone marrow, which keeps your bones alive.
Your bones then start to die. This often happens in the jaw.
Look, poisoning your body is hardly ever a good idea. This is why in my practice, I
never use these drugs. I’ve helped thousands of patients – both men and women –
increase their bone mineral density naturally. Here’s what I tell them:
1. Vitamin D3 (calcifediol) is your number-one bone nutrient. Your body uses it in
the process of making osteoclast and osteoblast cells. I always recommend sunshine
as the best source of vitamin D. But because it’s winter and you might not be able
to get that much sun on your skin, you can:
* Eat some mushrooms: They’re the only vegetable that has vitamin D.
* Eat seafood: Everyone knows by now that cold-water fish have lots of vitamin D.
But did you know that oysters have as much vitamin D as salmon? You get about 350
IU for every 3.5 ounces.
* Eat liver: Pork and beef liver are good sources. Braunschweiger pork sausage has
27 IU for every 2 slices, and beef liver has 42 IU for every 3 oz.
* Supplement: I recommend 3,000-5,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day.
2. Vitamin K is also important when it comes to maintaining strong bones. Vitamin K
comes in two forms: K1 is found in leafy green vegetables and helps with blood
clotting. K2 on the other hand aids with your bones’ absorption of calcium to help
make them stronger. You can find K2 in a variety of different foods including egg
yolks, organ meat, and organic milk. I recommend 90 mcg a day.
3. Sex hormones are building blocks for strong bones.
* Estrogen and testosterone control the amount of calcium absorbed into your bones.
And by maintaining proper levels in your body, the less likely your bones are to
weaken and fracture.
* Progesterone also plays a role. Studies show that the cycle of ovulation is also
a cycle of bone formation. Progesterone levels drop after giving birth, and after
menopause, so returning your levels to normal can be, according to one study,
“extraordinarily effective in reversing osteoporosis.”3
4. The more protein you eat, the easier it is for your bones to absorb calcium and
the stronger your bones will become.4 You want to eat as many different kinds of
protein as you can. When choosing animal protein, be sure to opt for natural,
hormone-free meat and eggs. Grass-fed beef, free-range chicken, and cage-free eggs
are good choices.
5. Weight-bearing exercise is one of the most effective ways to increase your bone
strength and help prevent fractures. These include walking, bicycling, sprints,
swimming or weight training. Focus on increasing intensity in all of these
exercises.
Another benefit for your bones is that if you focus on increasing intensity,
instead of increasing duration, you’ll lose weight and shed fat faster. This will
reduce the amount of stress on your bones and joints, helping you prevent future
injuries down the road.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
1 Lenart, B., Lorich, D., Lane, J., et al, “Atypical Fractures of the Femoral
Diaphysis in Postmenopausal Women Taking Alendronate,” New England Journal of
Medicine 2008
2 Odvina, C., Zerwekh, J., Rao, D., et al, “Severely suppressed bone turnover: a
potential complication of alendronate therapy,” J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab.
2005
3 Lee, J.R., "Is natural progesterone the missing link in osteoporosis prevention
and treatment?" Med. Hypotheses. Aug 1991;35(4):316-8
4 Kerstetter, Jane, E., O’Brien, Kimberly, O., Insogna, Karl, L., “Supplements
Dietary Protein, Calcium Metabolism, and Skeletol Homeostasis Revisited,” American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition Sept. 2003;78(3):584S-592S
|
|
Facebook
Twitter
Google Bookmarks
Stumbleupon
Delicious
Diigo
Technorati
