Natural Osteoporosis Treatments

Osteoporosis, commonly known as soft of brittle bones, refers to increased porousness of bones. The word literally means porous or honeycombed bones. In this disorder, the bones of the skeleton become fragile due to excessive loss of bone tissues. It may cause the bones to fracture more easily than they should. If the disease affects the spine, it may lead to collapse of the vertebral bodies and consequent deformity.

Normal bone consists of a series of thin, intersecting plates, called 'trabeculae'. These plates are surrounded by a dense shell. These plates form, what is called the Bone mass. In osteoporosis, they become filled with holes or may even totally disappear. This causes a diminution of bone mass. With loss of bone mass, the shell also becomes thin. All these changes make the bones extremely fragile and it can crack with the most trivial injury.

Osteoporosis is often found in old age, although it may occur at any age. Bone mass increases rapidly upto adolescence and continues to increase at a reduced rate until the early 30s. In women, at menopause, there is a particularly rapid loss of bone for several years, followed by a slower decline throughout the rest of life. In men, bone mass declines steadily from the age of 45 onwards. There is wide individual variation. The bones commonly affected are wrist bones, spine and hip bones.

Symptoms of Osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is usually accompanied by severe pain. In elderly patients, the disease is accompanied by an actual loss of height and by bending causing a humpback, deformity that crowds lungs and digestive organs. Other symptoms of osteoporosis are backache and spasms of the back muscles, aching of the long bones and, thinning of the pelvic bones, loss in twisting and bending strength and frequent occurrence of spontaneous fractures.

Causes of Osteoporosis

Abnormal porosity of bones in older people usually results from nutritional deficiencies and the body's inability to absorb and utilise nutrients. Prolonged deficiency of calcium and vitamin D in particular leads the skeleton to become demineralised and shrunken. The disease is far more prevalent in women than in men, because of calcium loss during pregnancies and menstruation. A broken hip bone is usually considered to be the result of a fall. But in reality, the collapse of the bone is the cause of a fall, which first draws attention to osteoporosis.

Other causes of this disease are over consumption of meat, heavy smoking of chronic alcoholism post-menopausal hormonal imbalances and diminished physical activity with age. Prolonged cortisone treatment, by blocking the bone-building activity and decreasing the intestinal absorption of calcium, may also cause osteoporosis.

Natural Treatment for Osteoporosis

Diet plays an important role in the treatment of osteoporosis. To begin with, the patient should adopt a raw-juice diet for about five days. In this regimen, he should take juices of fresh fruits and vegetables, diluted with water on 50:50 basis, every two hours during the day. Fruits and vegetables which can be used for juices are orange, lemon, pineapple, papaya, green leafy vegetables, red beet and carrot. A warm water enema should be taken daily during this period to cleanse the bowels.

After the raw juice diet, the patient may gradually embark upon a well-balanced diet consisting of seeds, nuts, grains, vegetables and fruits. The emphasis should be on mineral-rich foods such as whole grains, seeds, nuts, cooked and raw vegetables and fruits, milk and milk products such as homemade cottage cheese.

Foods rich in Calcium, magnesium, potassium and silicon will be specially beneficial in the treatment of this disorder. These four are green vegetables, cabbage, carrots, fruits and berries of all kinds. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds are excellent foods for use in this disease.

The patient should also take liberal quantities of foods rich in lactic acid, sour milk products, oats, barley, millet and rice.

The diet should be supplemented with a good all-inclusive mineral and trace mineral supplement and Betaine Hydrochloride tablets with each meal to ensure proper assimilation.

The patient should avoid large meals and overeating. He should eat slowly and chew his food extremely well. He should avoid tea, coffee, flesh food, white sugar and white flour products, processed, refined and denatured foods, smoking and alcoholic beverages are completely forbidden.

Latest studies indicate that trace mineral boron can exercise great influence on osteoporosis. This mineral is found in fruits and nuts. A deficiency of baron can hamper calcium metabolism, and thereby make the bones brittle. New research shows that boron dramatically boosts blood levels of the hormone oestrogen and other compounds that prevent calcium loss and bone dem-ineralization. Boron can thus serve as a mild 'oestrogen replacement therapy."

The liberal use of pineapple is considered beneficial in the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis and bone fractures. This is attributable to high content of manganese in the fruit. In a study Dr. Freeland-Graves, professor of nutrition at the university of Texas at Austin, discovered that women with osteoporosis had about one-third less maganese in their blood than healthy women. Further, when given manganese the diseased woman absorbed twice as much, showing that their bodies needed it.

The patient should undertake regular physical exercise for the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis. Exercises which put stress on long bones such as walking, jogging and cycling will be specially beneficial.