Haven't started any treatment as of yet after being diagnosed osteoporosis Oct 24, am very sceptical about using any of these drugs, Terrosa, Movymia, Sondelbay, has anyone ditched the drug option and gone down the natural diet route?
Is there a safe natural alternative t... - Bone Health and O...
Is there a safe natural alternative to taking drug treatment for osteoporosis
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suthmada
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Hello suthmada I´m not very experienced in this osteoporosis field, but this community has teached me a lot.
What I have concluded is: it depends on how severe is your condition ( Tscore, FRAX, blood marks, etc)and also your age. And them you will have the hard mission that is to decide if start on drugs or just change our life style ( eating, exercices etc...). Certainlly you will receive lots of comments here that you help you enormously. Good Luck
Hi Southmada
Similar history to you went to bed fit and healthy as I thought woke with severe rt lion pain Dr ???renal colic emergency scan and to my horror 3broken ribs and multiple spinal fractures
My treatment has been 2 years of teraparatide. Injection recent DXA scan showed marked improvement in bone density and end of Feb I commence twice yearly infusion
I have kept mobile do regular exercise and once the severe pain subsided do everything Dr and physio advice
Good luck with your recovery
Hi salmon20
Please can I ask which exercise you do ? Because for me I just use treadmill one hour 6 days a week and I don’t know if this is enough or not for my Osteoporosis or not .
Thank you so much.
Good morning Reneena
I walk 10000 steps most days 5-6 days
I do floor exercises and stretches advised by physio when my fracture’s
healed the advice was if I did anything which caused pain not to repeat some days it’s easier than others but alternative isn’t something I wish to think about Good luck
Did you have tummy upset whilst on the drug ? I’m thinking of changing from Eventity to this drug but noticed this was a common side effect
I'm 88 and don't suffer from osteoporosis. Maybe it's because I drink two pints of milk a day.
Or maybe you had a very healthy diet and lots of exercise in your youth?
Yes, we had a healthy diet in the 1940s. In spite of the war, I was well fed. My mother didn't work, not many did in those days, which helped. I remember being sent down to the greengrocer's from a very young age to buy potatoes, carrots and greens, some fruit and peas in summer.
If word got around that they had oranges or bananas, there would be a long queue outside when they opened.
We used to collect groceries. perhaps once a week and carry them home in shopping bags. I look at shopping trolleys these days and wonder how they would have got so much home with no cars on the road.
I do sympathise with mothers these days, having to come home at the end of a long day's work, and prepare meals for their family. It's not surprising that they buy ready meals and fill up with snacks.
As for exercise, I've never done any since I left school. My primary school was just across the road from my house and the senior school only ten minutes walk away. Playing out in the street was only in summer when it was very warm. That wouldn't have been very often in a summer like last year.
Thanks Physalis. You probably walked outdoors quite a lot? Right into the 1950s and 60s at least. Though you didn't think of that as exercise. My guess is that you had very good bone density and good eating habits as a child and young woman which set you up for the rest of your life. And probably were pretty abstemious with alcohol.
As you say, the expectation that a woman works outside the home as well as a man, and both usually indoors, little sun, stress, rushed, factory foods - these are very unnatural lifestyles..
I was born in the 1940’s and my mother had to work as my father had severe shell shock and in those days they were locked up so my mother worked every hour she could to keep a roof over our heads. I had childhood ?arthritis and wore thick leggings in the winter to help with the pain. An evening meal was an egg or a banana given to her by my grandmother. Weekend meals were with a relatives. A lot of my friends went hungry. The 1940’’s and 1950’s were tough and most of the children in my school in the East End were badly fed. School dinners were our main meal. During the holidays my grandmother stretched her small weekly food to cover me. I am allergic to the citrus family so fruit such as oranges made my mother and I sick, I also could not keep other fruit down. We are what we are but it was not all fantastic in the good old days.
No, I would hate to go back to the forties and fifties. My father was invalided out of the war in about 1942 with TB and then spent a year in hospital. My mother went to work at the co-op doing packing and we stayed with my aunt for a while.
My father died of TB in 1947 and when I was 12 my mother went out to work at the local tobacconist's. I had to come home from school to a freezing cold house and light the dining room coke fire and cook dinner. Lighting the fire was a bit hairy and I remember holding newspaper over the fireplace to provide a draught. It's a wonder I didn't have any accidents with it as the paper sometimes caught fire.
No cavity wall insulation, no double glazing, only two radio stations. My mother used to get so close to the fire that she had mottled burn marks on her legs.
My father was born in Bow but by the thirties they had moved out to Barking. Conditions there were, no doubt, much better.
At the senior school two girls had free school dinners. I have wondered recently if I would have been eligible too as I was the only one without a father.
You are indeed fortunate but have you actually been tested for Osteoporosis? I’m 85 and like you grew up on a sensible diet and, living in the countryside, walking many miles as no car and rare transport and have always drunk lots of milk so the thought of Osteoporosis didn’t enter my head. I fell in July and cracked the Pubic Rama of my pelvis. I reacted badly to the Alendronic acid I was given in hospital and asked my GP for a bone scan as was pretty sure I didn’t need the tablets but she told me that 75% of women over the age of 70 have it and the statistic below makes even gloomier reading, The GP agreed to request a scan and later texted me to say the the result showed I did indeed have it and to continue with the tablets though I haven't done so yet as I need to research alternative options as I ended up in hospital with Colitis after taken them.
“Osteoporosis is one of the most important health threats to the elderly community, as more than half of all women over 45 and 90% of women over the age of 75 are afflicted with osteoporosis. “
Yes, I did have a DEXA scan and it showed osteopenia. That was a couple of years ago. The doctor gave me calcium tablets and alendronic acid. When I looked at it I could see that I would be taking 2000 mg of calcium which added to my two pints of milk would mean a daily intake of 4000 mg. I didn't think that would be a very good thing so didn't take them.
Incidentally, my mother was prescribed calcium tablets but having read all of the possible side-effects in the small print she refused to take them.
I take 2000iu of Vitamin D daily and I would recommend it to everyone.
The GP has cancelled the Adcal calcium and vitamin D3 tablets the hospital prescribed as I either have - or hopefully now had - a kidney stone which precludes added calcium. I’ve taken Vitamin D3 for over 20 years but it obviously didn’t help me. Guess it’s the hand we are dealt and living a long life. I’ve never broken a bone until last July, never had an operation and rarely been in hospital. Good luck to everyone here following a similar path.
Taking Vitamin K2 should sort out problems with a calcium supplement. Vitamin K2 (not K1, which you don't need to supplement) sends calcium to the bones, and additionally helps to remove it from places where it settles unwanted. Most of us eating a standard modern diet are now deficient in this vitamins. An appropriate daily dose is about 200 mcg Vitamin K2 MK-7.
Unless you've tested an overly high Vitamin D level you should be able to continue taking Vitamin D3 as it works with K2 to utilise calcium.
When you read percentages like that, it's a wake up call that something is very terrible about bones in our society and era. How could so many folks have such brittle bones? What is causing that? Why? Until we address those issues, meds are the only option for most of society. I question this approach to medicine and wonder why after all these decades such a serious condition isn't resolved.
I think it isn't getting that much worse. Apparently we start losing bone mass from the age of 35. The menopause speeds it up and I suppose going on hrt for eight years helped me.
In 1900 life expectancy was 32 years and that had doubled to 71 years by 2021. We all age, some more quickly than others.
Genetics may play a part but my daughter who is only 62 suffers from bad osteoarthritis and I don't. However, her feet problems are like mine but much worse. She has just had an operation on one foot and will have the other one done soon.
Evolution has resulted in us not being designed for a long life .
I am relatively new here. There are people on here who have put their scores back into osteopenia by diet and exercise.
I have been thinking about this a lot. One of the things we can do is assess our own selves and change our own risk factors.
My Frax score is 16 per cent - I have osteoporosis (OP) and a compression fracture of the spine. So I theoretically fall outside the need for drugs which comes in at 20 per cent.
But if you look up how the Frax (invented in 2008) is calculated it's v broad brush. In the US I would have a different higher score.
One element is parental - did your parents have OP? Who knows? They weren't tested. My mother's bones were "like cheese" but no one gave her a Dexa.
It might be a starting place to look at. Frax and see how accurate you with your high knowledge of yourself think it is.
And is there anything you can immediately modify eg alcohol intake which is part of Frax - reduce that to a measured two units a day, if over, and you've immediately altered your Frax calculation.
I read that 98 per cent of the fractures they're expecting come frome falls, not the compression fractures we all dread.
My mother's fall and mine were "mechanical" not caused by weakness. Frankly they could have been prevented by putting down the dogs (!) and having motion sensor lights on all the stairs. I'm extremely cautious and even more so now - we have the lights and I'm getting jazzy grip bars for the baths. I wouldn't go out in ice. That approach is not factored into Frax.
Then there's how much exercise you already do - not factored into Frax. We need to keep muscles strong surrounding our spine and in our legs, work on core and posture and not let any of it go as we age, to support our weak bones. You have to work out for yourself what impact exercises are best for you. The melio osteoporosis guide maybe helps on this, though it is a money making site.
Then there's excluding any conditions which might be causing bone loss. No one has a full picture of what those are, but anything that limits absorption of nutrients is to watch for. Celiac, Crohns etc but maybe also intolerances to gluten, casein, maybe sulphates. You know if you get bloating or digestive issues - try to track down the cause. Low stomach acid might contribute.
You can privately check for D deficiency if the gp won't, and some people find it hard to absorb D, probably for reasons related to the last paragraph. Whether you need to supplement D for bones if you are not deficient is surprisingly controversial in the literature. Some drs advise keeping it at the top of the range and some say it may increase falls )!) I take D in the winter. You have to consider your lifestyle and read up to make a decision.
That's true of all the supps. Read up, think of your existing diet and look for flaws in it.
The ROS recommend a healthy varied diet with plenty of green veg and it is on their website. Remove or limit processed foods. But in real life we are under time pressures. Maybe you already eat like that. If not, try to make changes one at a time so they stick. Plenty of protein, remove all empty foods.
But there's no agreed handout sheet solution on any of it.
I wrote all that without reading your other post - with all those fractures I personally would say drugs are necessary, but do the lifestyle changes too.
I’ve just recently been diagnosed with osteoporosis. My doctor told me that my treatment of chemo and radiotherapy for breast cancer plus full hysterectomy is the reason for my diagnosis. Since 2012 I’ve taken calceos tablets twice daily and also take Anastrole tablet for the cancer. I also had my thyroid removed when I was teenager and was given a lot of radio iodine which I feel contributed.
My levothyroxine, Anastrole, rosustatins all cause muscle pain.
I have had 2 tablets so far is Risedronate - 1 weekly and would also like a herbal alternative.
I was born 1950 and have always had fresh home grown vegetables. There isn’t any food I won’t eat. As a baby we always had the baby orange juice and at school, our bottle of milk.
Unfortunately I can’t walk far thanks to a replacement hip which went horribly wrong.
I now have arthritis in both knees and -2.7 osteoporosis in right hip.
My approach is an exercise routine containing lots of weight bearing exercises (walking, jogging, weight lifting etc.), plant based, calcium rich food, vitamin D, K2 and magnesium supplements and stretching. I'm still working on stress reduction and sleep routine to improve sleep.
In the end it falls to the individual to decide what to do. Both taking the drugs or not taking them can have consequences. Before decisions are made the situation has to be weighed carefully. There are quite a few things to be considered. All the best finding what's right for you.
I'm on the Atrial Fibrillation forum and comments there led me to have a vit d test. Having taken Vit D for years I was surprised to find I was quite deficient. I now take a couple of drops a day of a supplement I bought from Amazon, that's 2000iu. I feel very well and a test last year showed a level of 159, up from 30.
I did have a fall six years ago and ended up in hospital for a week and another a year later with no injuries. My problem is balance and I am very careful all the time. I had another fall last week in the garden. Luckily I ended up on a bag of compost.
My main problem now is hearing loss. I'm ok virtually all the time but a get-together of the family last week made me realise I must do something about it before the next one, on 9 May.
That's v interesting re the low D despite supplementing.
I was diagnosed with Primary Hyperparathyroidism in 2014 with the removal of 2 parathyroid glands related to adenomas. Since then I have been getting Dexa scans every 2 years. I am 65 now with my last scan done in August/2024. This scan showed an improvement in both my hips from osteoporosis to osteopenia. I still have osteoporosis in my spine, but that also improved to -2.5, I do not take any prescription medications for osteoporosis. Over the last 2 years, I have added Vitamin K-2 100 mcg daily taken at noon with my Citracal Maximum Plus. I eat a plant based, gluten free diet, with very limited dairy due to having some lactose intolerance. I lift weights twice a week, walk with a weighted vest at times, resistance exercise with bands, have a mini rebounder trampoline, and a vibration plate. I try to do a variety of exercises. I think all this has helped me. It does take a while to improve bone health. I think as long as I stay stable, I will not opt for meds. I am not saying taking the medications are a bad thing, it is just not for me. I don't like all the side effects.
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