What Does YOUR Hip Bone Look Like?This issue of Viewpoint will print out in about 22 pages. You are invited to download this copyrighted article on the condition that you do not alter it, and that any dissemination of it includes the name and address of the author, Karl Loren.
You will never read a more useful article about YOUR bones than this one -- guaranteed!
![[Bullet]](../images/bullet.gif){kind=small}
Learn how you
can prevent, even reverse, osteoporosis Learn the
exact mechanism of the growth of bone. Find out how
you can avoid drowning in bed!
Bone Up On Bones
Calcium – The Building Block
Don’t Die Of Hip Fracture!
by Karl Loren
A large number of people, particularly women, die in bed, from the complications caused by a simple fall – a fall causing a fracture of the hip – leading to death!
I want to explore that issue for you! In this article called Bone Up On Bones.
My mother-in-law, 83, got out of bed one night, just a few months ago. She got up to go to the bathroom, lost her balance and fell. Jimmy Stewart did a similar thing in December, 1995. My mother-in-law was lucky. She did NOT break anything. But, she had also been taking a particular type of calcium which I’ll be describing later in this issue.
Had it not been for that calcium, then the act of getting dizzy as she got out of bed could have been her death!
Let’s say you are a woman over 50. You are in bed. It’s 3 AM. You have to urinate. You get out of bed, lose your balance, and simply fall against the bed, then down to the floor. But, your bones are so brittle that this very slight fall is enough to cause a fracture.
Pain!
You go to the hospital, and you learn that you are now going to have to spend a long time in bed, recovering from a very slight fracture of the hip.
As it turns out, you never leave that bed!
You eat EVERY meal in bed!
Your bones never heal!
You die – not because of the fractured bone, but because of other complications.
Find out more about that in this issue of Viewpoint, and more importantly, find out how to prevent this from happening to you.
Is This Common?
Millions of older Americans die terribly from the lack of calcium in their bones – they don’t have enough calcium to prevent the bones from breaking in a very slight fall. The bone fractures or breaks, and they have so little bone health left that the bone won’t heal.
They lie in bed, slowly slipping down hill. Finally, they die mostly because they couldn’t ever get out of bed.
When you are older, the healing process takes longer because you are already losing bone mass daily just by living at your age.
When you are young, and break a bone, you start the healing from a time when you had been normally ADDING bone mass on a daily basis. When you are older, you start the healing of a bone break from a condition where you are probably already losing bone, every day. Now you have the double problem.
When you live for a while in a bed, allowing that bone to heal, you lose bone mass ever faster and the bones just never get a chance to heal. Healing COULD take place, and it would take only two actions – well planned exercise (even in bed) and the proper calcium supplement.
Exercise is particularly important for older people – it doesn’t have to be rigorous, but it does have to put some weight on your leg and hip bones – just gentle walking will be fine. In bed you would have to be more creative, but it can be done.
If you spend almost all of your time sitting, or in bed, your bones will start to disappear!
The common name for this problem is Osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a disease of the bones, characterized by a decrease in bone mass and density.
The resulting weakness in the skeleton increases the risk of broken bones, particularly those of the vertebrae (backbone), wrist and hip. By the time this has happened, up to 30 percent of the sufferer’s bone mass may have been lost.
These broken bones are often caused by a minor fall or bump which would not normally cause a break.
It is a "silent disease" that progresses without any outward sign, sometimes for decades, until a sufferer has a fracture. People may often lose height due to collapsed vertebrae without realizing they have osteoporosis. The spine shown below has been condensed by calcium loss. Yours might look this way, or worse!
My mother-in-law lost 2½ inches of her height in the years before she started taking this special calcium. It is not unusual for older people to shrink in size. A woman of 80 might have lost three or more inches from her height at 50!
You can’t grow those inches back, with any treatment I know, but you can sure stop further losses, and you can strengthen those bones so much that the chances of hip fracture are much less!
Osteoporosis is sometimes called brittle bone disease.
In Europe, Japan and the United States, an estimated 75 million people suffer from osteoporosis – as many as 200 million worldwide.
If present trends continue, the prevalence of osteoporosis is expected to double by 2020.
Broken Bones?
Twenty five million Americans have the bone disease, porous bones, or osteoporosis. For many, the broken bone can be a death sentence. Fifty thousand American women die each year as a result of complications AFTER a broken bone.
The story is usually a sad one.
I remember my Great Aunt Annie. She was old when I was young! She had lost two inches of her height because the bones had shrunk. But, she still got around, with a walker. Then, one day, she lost her balance, fell and fractured her left hip.
She seemed in such good spirits, for weeks and months after that, but she never left her bed, and she just got weaker and weaker.
At first her spirits were fine. But, from lack of exercise her muscles weakened. Her bones never did heal. She didn’t breathe well. Even when she wanted to walk, she couldn’t. She got very discouraged. She got bed sores. She got irritable! She finally got so bad that no one wanted to visit with her. She finally died of something I didn’t begin to understand, back then – from the best I could understand she drowned in her sleep! How could someone drown in her sleep?
This is an important point and I want to explain it much better.
Once an elderly person is confined to bed, unless he or she is well motivated to continue a variety of "exercises" in bed, certain complications can set in which lead to death.
One of the problems here is that people seldom breath deeply enough to fill their entire lung capacity. When they are lying in bed it would be normal for their bodies to be bent forward, thus causing restriction and obstruction to the lungs. Furthermore, they don’t seem to need much oxygen, so may breath even less deeply than normal.
What many people don’t realize is that the body eliminates a great deal of waste through the air expelled from the lungs. Sure, we get rid of waste products when we urinate, and the skin eliminates a lot, but the lungs, too, are important sources of removal from the body of various waste products.
Most waste products are carried in the blood and all of the blood circulates through the lungs. THERE the water, along with toxins, is extracted from the blood. THAT water-toxin mixture mixes with the air in the lungs and THEN is expelled as moist air.
Usually, the amount of water in the air entering the lungs is less than the amount of water in the air leaving our lungs. So, our lungs are constantly collecting water from the body, and mixing it with air to get rid of it.
Now, picture this elderly woman (usually) whose breathing is getting more and more shallow, and whose lungs are trying to get rid of waste that the body doesn’t want. (Note on lung capacity.)
The water comes out into the lung tissue, but there just isn’t enough air to mix with, and some of that water settles in small pockets, finally big pools, inside the lungs. Infection sets in and causes more toxins to be excreted, with more water, into lung cavities.
So, when I was a kid I couldn’t understand how someone would DROWN in their own water. It just didn’t make sense to me.
Now I understand.
I hope it never happens to you!
And now you can understand how a fractured hip could lead to confinement in bed, lead to shallow breathing, and lead to an accumulation of water inside the lungs.
One of the solutions is quite common. Any competent doctor treating a person confined to bed this way, would insist that the patient start exercising his or her lungs by blowing into a simple gadget which measures the force of your breath.
One gadget has a Ping-Pong ball which jumps upwards in a plastic tube when you blow into it.
If your are breathing shallowly, and your lungs are weak, you can’t get that darn Ping-Pong ball to rise much.
When your lungs are in good shape, you CAN get the Ping-Pong ball to hit the top of the tube.
So, there are solutions to these problems, but I’ll bet you hadn’t heard such a simple explanation of water in the lungs, or such an easy remedy as Ping-Pong. The problems with your lungs, during extended bed confinement are more complicated than I’ve described, so I’m going to go on.
An old woman who fractures her hip, stays in bed and then dies from accumulation of water has died a terrible death.
That’s how my Great Aunt Annie went!
I didn’t understand then, but I do now.
The hip fracture, of course, is caused by lack of proper bone density, and that traces back,, mostly, to lack of adequate calcium. But, that’s not a complete explanation either.
This problem is caused partly by LOSS of calcium from the bones and also by lack of the right amount and type of calcium in the diet.
Even if there is enough calcium in the diet, it may not be getting through to rebuild the bones which have lost the calcium.
Let’s look at what causes us to LOSE calcium, and then at what’s wrong with the normal calcium in our diet – that it can’t be used to rebuild our bones.
Calcium Loss?
What causes people to lose the calcium in their bones?
First, you should know that it is normal for the bones to lose and gain calcium. About 20% of all the calcium in our bones is replaced during a one year period. During the growing phase, of youth more calcium is added to the bones than is lost. During middle age and elderly years, more calcium is normally lost from the bones than is added back. But, a 20% turnover per year is normal, young or old.
It is not unusual for a 50 year old person to be losing 1% of the calcium in the bones EVERY YEAR! You could, at age 80, have 70% or less of the calcium you had many years earlier.
Next, you should know that about 99% of the calcium in the body is in the bones. There is a tiny amount of calcium in the blood stream and that is the calcium which neutralizes the acids we get in so many foods.
The calcium in your bloodstream also controls muscle contraction and transmission of nerve impulses. That muscle contraction is important because one of the most important muscles in your body is the heart.
Yes, the heart is just one big muscle.
If the amount of calcium in your blood, going through your heart muscle, isn’t right, the heart muscle would not work at all. You can die because your heart quits pumping, and it will quit pumping if it doesn’t "contract." The contraction of muscles is controlled by the amount of calcium in the blood.
Fortunately, the body is so well designed that when there is a slight shortage of calcium in the blood, the body will take some calcium away from the bones and put it into the blood stream.
Blood calcium doesn’t account for a large share of the total calcium in your body, but it is one of the most important places for calcium.
You Lose Calcium Every Hour Of The Day!
Everyone constantly loses blood calcium through urine, sweat, and feces, and it is renewed daily with calcium from your diet, if there is some there. If there is inadequate calcium in your diet, the body takes it from the bones. The great majority of people don’t get enough calcium in their diets, or don’t get a type which will help the bones.
You can see, here, the importance of taking your calcium supplement with every meal. If you take it only once per day, then most of the rest of the day, when the blood needs calcium, it will have no choice but to take if from the bones. If you have eaten some calcium just within the last hour or two, the blood can get its necessary calcium from that just recently eaten.
As the all-important blood usage for calcium takes calcium from the bones, the body constantly breaks down and rebuilds bones. Ultimately, the bone calcium is replaced by calcium taken in through the mouth. The body has no way of manufacturing any basic element, and since it loses calcium every day, you need to add calcium into your body every day.
Throughout life, people’s calcium needs change. Until about age 35, people consume more calcium than their bodies lose. But around age 45, the body begins to slip into "negative calcium balance" -- eventually the body loses more calcium than it takes in.
How fast this happens depends on many factors explored below, but it is almost guaranteed that the process will start for you if you don’t take the calcium I describe in this Viewpoint.
What Makes The Body Lose Calcium?
Being a woman!
It’s sad but true that hip fractures and brittle bone disease are mostly female problems.
One in four women will have osteoporosis while only one in forty men will. (probable reason)
For more than four years researchers followed 9,516 women from Baltimore, Minneapolis, Portland, Ore., and the Monogahela Valley in Pennsylvania. The women, who were age 65 or older at the outset of the study, were questioned about their ethnic origin, the number of pregnancies they had and the number of children who were breast-fed, the age at which their menopause started, their tobacco and alcohol consumption, their family medical history and medications they were taking. The women also were given physical exams and their bone density was measured.
Findings:
A woman whose mother had broken a hip was twice as likely to suffer one herself, compared to a woman with no such family history.
Women who spent less than four hours a day on their feet had twice the risk of their more active counterparts. Walking, even a small amount, reduced the risk of hip fracture.
Smoking appears to raise the risk of hip fracture, but not because smoking itself affects bone density. Rather, it is because women who smoke are more likely to be underweight and in general to be in worse health than non-smokers.
The more weight a woman gained after age 25, the lower her risk of hip fracture. And women who weighed less than they did at age 25 had double the risk of hip fracture of those whose weight had not changed.
Caffeine and soft drink consumption increases risk of hip fracture.
Taking tranquilizers increases risk of hip fracture.
Foods high in acids cause the body to steal calcium from the bones to neutralize the acidity.
If you are a woman whose mother had the problem, and you had an early menopause (before the age of 45), and you are now over 70, your odds of having the brittle bone disease are extremely high!
If you have had surgery where your ovaries were removed, that increases your risk of brittle bone disease.
If you don’t exercise much, you have greater chances of getting that fateful hip fracture. Many other life-style characteristics influence your bone health. Click here to read actual scientific studies in this area. Using fluoride toothpaste can be harmful to your bones, too!
If you also drink a lot of alcohol, are small in size and just don’t get much calcium in your diet, you could be in sad shape as far as your bones are concerned.
So there are many factors which are well identified as being related to high risk of osteoporosis.
Obviously, since many of these factors have to do with the female sex, the researchers have also traced this subject back to the female hormone, estrogen, and then more accurately to the hormone progesterone produced within the body. While women are still capable of becoming pregnant, before menopause, their body produces these female hormones.
These hormones seem to do wonderful things for the female body – including helping her avoid heart attacks and retain the calcium she has in her bones.
One of the few accepted medial treatments for osteoporosis is, in fact, artificial hormone treatment with estrogen. Unfortunately prolonged use of the artificial substance seems to lead to higher rates of breast cancer. There may be an exception, however; read the footnote.
When a women passes menopause, and her body no longer produces estrogen, she starts to lose calcium from her bones. She can lose as much as 3% in the first year after menopause.
How Can You Measure Bone Loss?
Fortunately it’s easy!
But, few people ever do it!
All too often it is only the occurrence of a bone fracture that alerts the physician to the presence of osteoporosis. There are machines that measure bone mass and diagnose osteoporosis quickly, painlessly and safely.
I, Karl Loren, had one of the machines measure my bone mass, several years ago. The doctor was amazed because my bone density, at age 59, showed up as similar to a 20 year old man in the prime of health.
In other words, I had reversed whatever bone loss I might have ever had, and had improved the density and health of my own bones by taking a special type of calcium.
Even very old women, with all the risk factors described above, can reverse the loss of calcium from their bones, and increase their bone density—reducing risk of fractures!
You might not be able to make bones GROW in length, but you can at least make the bones you still have become more dense, stronger and much healthier!
Bone density is measured by a scanning machine. Special types of x-ray machines can do this, and you should be sure you get tested only with the modern testing equipment.
What’s Wrong With The Calcium In Our Diet?
The simple answer is "many things!"
First, we don’t get enough of it.
The government recommends various amounts of calcium for various ages and sexes, but the great majority of Americans over 40 do not swallow calcium of ANY form in the quantities needed to prevent bone loss!
Second, what calcium we do get doesn’t get absorbed from the stomach and intestines into the blood stream.
You’d be amazed at the junk that may be clogging the inside of your intestines – keeping ALL nutrients from being absorbed. I’ll write another day about how to improve your digestive system.
Next, that calcium that gets into the blood must get there by passing through the intestine. That is not easy for a particle of rock – which the body thinks of as "not food," but, simply, rock.
These rocks can get in through the intestine in only two different ways:
First, they can be coated with proteins in the stomach (natural chelation in the body) and then the intestine "thinks" it’s food, and absorbs it.
Or, the particle of rock can be SO small that it lodges in the cracks of the intestine long enough to actually dissolve and get passed through as atoms of calcium.
When you get a calcium with both characteristics, you have a very fine calcium supplement.
It should be extremely tiny in size, and should be in a mixture with protein substance so that the body thinks it’s food!
Once calcium goes through the intestine, in the form of individual atoms of calcium, its next challenge is to get itself deposited into the matrix that holds pieces of calcium – the bone.
What Is Calcium?
We think of our bones as being made of calcium, and that calcium is an important mineral to include in our diet.
What is a mineral? What is calcium? What types of calcium are useful in the body? Why is this subject important to you? These are the questions posed in this issue of Viewpoint.
First, what is a mineral? I guess we start by saying that it is one of the many elements which make up the entire physical universe.
Loosely speaking, a mineral is anything which is neither animal nor vegetable. There are more technical definitions, but this one will do for a start. (See the footnote for a more detailed description of how a mineral is absorbed into the body.)
We think of calcium as a mineral, and it is. Traditional medicine recognizes that some minerals are essential to health – that your body cannot manufacture them and that they must be obtained from what you eat.
Among these essential minerals are calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, copper, manganese, iodine, chromium, potassium, sodium and several more trace minerals.
Calcium occurs naturally in the crust of the earth, but it always occurs in combination with other minerals.
You can find veins of iron ore, or actual nuggets of gold in various places of the earth. You will never find a "vein" of calcium – it is always combined with some other elements.
One of the most common forms of calcium is calcium carbonate – where the calcium is combined with carbon. This is the form you see for oysters and shells of all kinds. In your normal experience, this is chalk.
How Does Calcium Get Inside Your Body?
The easiest way for some substance to get absorbed into the body is if that substance will dissolve in water, and the dissolved ingredient is broken down into the size of individual atoms. That is what happens for some forms of calcium, but not, unfortunately, calcium carbonate.
Calcium carbonate will not dissolve in pure water. It will dissolve, however, if there is acid in the water. So, we begin to see that when there is acid present, calcium can be dissolved – when it is dissolved, it can be absorbed. One very important acid in the body is hydrochloric acid (HCl) produced in the stomach to help digest (dissolve) food particles.
Some calcium carbonate is dissolved by the stomach acids – but it’s a slow process. If the stomach empties the calcium out, into the intestines before much dissolving has gone on, then most of the calcium will be wasted.
Calcium carbonate is NOT a useful source of calcium if you want efficient absorption from the intestines into the blood stream.
More soluble forms of calcium include calcium citrate, calcium lactate and calcium aspartate. These forms of calcium would be more easily absorbed into the body than calcium carbonate, but even they are absorbed slowly compared to the special type of calcium described later in this Viewpoint.
Since calcium carbonate is so common on the earth, it is very cheap and it is one of the most common forms of calcium supplement which people take. You’d be wasting your money on it.
Only 10 percent of the calcium in our bones is in the form of calcium carbonate. The most important calcium in bones is in the form called calcium phosphate – a combination of calcium and phosphorus. But, calcium phosphate is not easily absorbed into the body, either.
One very common form of calcium is called "bone meal," and consists of animal bones ground up into a powder. Obviously, with such a source, you have calcium in about the exact right proportions for human bones. There is no significant difference chemically between the bones in animals and the bones in humans.
BUT, bone meal is processed by heating and grinding the animal bones, and it’s interesting to learn what heat does to calcium!
If you heat bone meal you cook and kill the protein in it, so it is no longer "food" to the body!
You will seldom find calcium phosphate offered for sale as a calcium supplement.
Doctors DO recommend increased calcium, usually in supplements, for older women, particularly, but only in the private offices of these doctors will you learn about the research showing that almost NONE of the usual calcium supplements actually lead to increased bone mass.
One form of calcium DOES increase bone mass, and I’ll come to that in a bit.
When should you start adding calcium to your diet? A study by Pennsylvania researchers shows that girls who took calcium supplements starting at age 12 or 14 increased their bone mass by 4 percent by age 16, compared to those who did not take the supplement.
These teens could reduce their risk of future osteoporosis-related bone fractures by almost 50 percent if that level of bone density is maintained.
This research showed that most people, especially young girls, are deficient in calcium. In 1994 the National Institutes of Health recommended that people ages 11 to 24 consume 1,200 to 1,500 milligrams of calcium per day, those between ages 25 to 50 get 1,000 milligrams of calcium a day, and postmenopausal women get 1,500 milligrams per day.
In reality, most American women get less than 800 milligrams of calcium per day, and most of that calcium is of little use to the more elderly body!
The official government opinion on calcium was developed in 1984 by a group called the Consensus Conference on Osteoporosis. They recommended that women with a deficiency of estrogen take 1,500 mg of calcium per day, and suggested that 1,750 might be better for reducing bone loss.
It is never too late to start treatment:
reductions in fracture rates can occur in as little as 18 months. [Source]
How Do Bones Grow?
Here is where we start back to school!
Originally I didn’t much think about the questions: How Do Bones Grow?
If someone had asked me, I would have said something like:
Well, I guess the calcium from your diet just deposits into the shape of the bones, controlled by something called bone cells. That is, I suppose that individual bone cells take in a lot of calcium, and become your skeleton.
There is a little bit of truth to this guess, but mostly it would be wrong!
Let’s start with a good analogy:
Bones Grow:
Start With Fishnet
and
Add Rocks!
You pretty much know what a fishnet looks like.
Now, just get the idea of a fishnet where the spaces are quite small, and rocks that are quite small. Then add in a bit of glue.
And, you know what rocks look like.
Now, coat the fishnet with that glue and throw the rocks against the fishnet.
Some of the rocks will stick.
Pour on more glue.
Throw more fish net over the mess!
Throw more rocks.
More rocks will stick.
After a while of this the combination of fishnet, glue and rocks will make a solid structure.
You are beginning to get an idea of how bones grow.
There IS fishnet involved. Rather than there being a separate glue, let’s just figure that the fishnet has two unique characteristics.
The fishnet, itself, is sticky. You don’t have to coat it with glue to make it sticky.
And, second, the fishnet is alive!
The rocks are NOT alive, but the fishnet IS alive. That means that the fishnet part of this combination can grow. Rocks don’t grow!
Now you are getting the picture.
Our bones are a combination of living fishnet with non-living rocks. The rocks are mostly calcium, but there are a few other minerals involved.
The fishnet?
Ah, there is where people’s attention should go when they want to understand bones! Rocks are not hard to swallow, but fishnet is not easy to grow!
The fishnet has a more elegant name when it comes to science. Let’s call the fishnet a matrix.
Matrix
Now you are getting there.
Matrix is described in a standard encyclopaedia as
connective tissue, supportive tissue widely distributed in the body. Consisting mainly of substances certain cells secrete, it contains relatively few cells. The connective tissue that forms tendons and ligaments is mainly collagen—white, inelastic protein fibers. Cartilage, vital to the skeletal system of vertebrates, is fibrous collagen in a gel; it is firm but flexible. Connective tissue found under the skin and supporting most organs contains collagen and other fibers as well. Bone connective tissue is made up largely of collagen fibers and calcium salt crystals; its structure is strong and rigid. Blood and lymph have a fluid connective tissue matrix.[Matrix]
Now, you can begin to see that the health of our bones depends at least as much on the health of the matrix as it does the rocks which stick to it.
In fact, the big myth in all the talk you hear about "calcium" is that such talk doesn’t put the emphasis where it belongs.
Most people don’t suffer from a shortage of "calcium," but rather from two related shortages.
They suffer from the lack of a healthy matrix in which the calcium can be embedded
or
They suffer from the lack of the right type of calcium which CAN be embedded on a healthy matrix.
So, to understand bone strength, you need to understand the matrix and the types of calcium which will embed readily on that matrix.
Finally, there are a few more materials which are needed and which are enough different from either the matrix or the calcium that they need separate mention.
For instance, the mineral boron is sadly lacking in most diets. You need about 5 mg per day and only get about one. If you want your calcium to be absorbed into your body, be sure that you take a few milligrams of boron with your calcium supplement.
It’s as if the rocks of calcium have to have a special electrical charge to get connected to the matrix. Within this analogy, you could have a very healthy matrix, and particles of just the right composition of calcium, but somehow the calcium would just never get stuck into the matrix.
Electrical Connections, Too!
Then, you discover that the little calcium rocks need to have a bit of electricity applied to them – electricity which is opposite in charge from the electrical nature of the matrix.
NOW, the little calcium rocks will rush toward the matrix, and once they touch, they become REALLY connected.
Once they are connected, the connection no longer depends on any difference in electrical charge between the calcium rock and the matrix. They are just connected, and the combination takes on its own electrical characteristic.
So, this subject is interesting, slightly complicated, but well worth attacking. If you will take the time to understand this data, you can know HOW to increase the strength of your bones, and how to avoid some of those health problems associated with brittle bones!
Since most people think they know the term calcium, at least, and few people are familiar with the nature of this "matrix," let’s start with the easy one.
Let me clear up one common misconception: The bones are not made up of solid calcium. Actually, the calcium in your body is contained in a matrix of fiber. The COMBINATION is bone.
Collagen
Picture a fishnet structure made up of something called collagen. The fishnet is actually about 90% to 95% collagen, and a small amount of other materials. Collagen is much of the stuff you eat when you eat meat. It might be called the connective tissue.
The meat is made up of connective tissue that holds it all together. Particles of fat, protein, water and other substances are held in the matrix of connective tissue in the meat. In a like manner, the particles are calcium are held in the matrix of connective tissue in the bones.
Obviously in meat the particles are liquid and soft, while in bone the particles are hard and solid.
The connective tissue in both bone and meat is collagen; it is a special type of protein, and you also have it in your skin, for instance, to keep the skin in one piece.
So, your bones couldn’t be made of solid calcium because they would be too brittle and there would be no way that a blood supply could get through.
But, your bones couldn’t be made up ONLY of collagen, either, or they would bend every which way!
So, consider your bones a matrix of collagen holding particles of calcium in place. Some of the research with calcium starts with trying different types of materials for the matrix.
Other research looks for different forms of calcium that will fit into the matrix.
When you need a hip replacement, they put in metal parts for the new, artificial hip. Normally the body won’t like this foreign substance, the metal, inside the body. But, they coat that metal with a special type of this matrix material – a matrix material which can attract calcium and be accepted within the body as if it were real flesh and blood!
In other words, we’ve got research scientists figuring out how to "grow" bones by starting with an artificial matrix material which will naturally attract and hold particles of calcium.
That’s exciting stuff!
Years ago dental implants were quite rare. Now, they are much more common. The reason is that the dentist can take that artificial tooth, coat it with a synthetic matrix material which the body accepts as "real." They body will stick hunks of calcium, or proteins, or other substances, into that matrix, just like it was real collagen.
You could say that they are researching the "growing" of bones in a test tube. When they do that, they put this artificial matrix material in a test tube with water, other chemicals, and calcium, and watch to see if the calcium "collects" around the matrix material.
It’s working!’
Now, how does that affect my mother-in-law, who fell, or the millions of other Americans who fall, break a bone and never get up?
The body’s natural processes for healing bones are often long gone for an elderly person. If the doctor could put some of this artificial matrix material into the area where the bone is, and if the body would start depositing calcium into the holes of that matrix, you could actually rebuild bone!
That is going on!
All this research has exciting ramifications for oral supplements of calcium.
Artificial Fish Nets!
You’ve learned how the particles of calcium you take into your body have to find that matrix to stick onto.
Well, researchers have tried to manufacture this fishnet stuff. There is a great deal of research on the matrix – what it’s made of and how to make one artificially.
Some of this research actually starts with spider webs! You can see how a spider web fits the definition. It’s like a fish net, and it’s sticky.
What Does Karl Loren Recommend?
One of the wonders of modern science is the tremendous difficulty it has trying to duplicate nature. There are literally dozens of different forms of calcium you can purchase as calcium supplements.
Of all of those, only two come close to the natural form in which calcium exists inside the human body.
In the body about 99% of the calcium is in the bone – and there it has a very easily identified composition. The bones are made mostly of calcium, but also of phosphorus, magnesium, carbon, fluorine, sulfur and other trace minerals. For instance about 85% of the calcium is in a combination form called calcium phosphate – yet if a scientist produces "pure" calcium phosphate, as a supplement, it will not be useful to the body – with some of the reasons understood, and others not.
Chemicals, Yes!
Life, No!
This seems generally to be true – science can give you a chemical name for the content of the bones and science can seemingly produce that same exact substance, but the body doesn’t like it. It was not the product of life!
In the case of the bones inside the body, scientists have come up with a special word – hydroxyapatite. This fancy word means nothing more than BONE! The various minerals that fill up the holes in the fish net, mostly calcium, altogether, have the name hydroxyapatite.
The bones in various animals are not much different in composition from one another. Thus, the bones of cattle contain calcium and other minerals in about the same ratios as in human bones.
So, what science doesn’t completely understand yet, is that when you grind up animal bones, and swallow them, you are getting a combination of calcium (and other substances) which equals the composition of human bones!
With one big exception.
I mentioned that there are TWO forms of calcium that are natural and might be good for you. |Both of those come from animal bones, but the process of preparation is vastly different! Watch and learn!
Hot Stuff!
Vs
Low Temperature Grinding!
One of those is bone meal – one of the most inexpensive forms of natural calcium that exists. Unfortunately, when bone meal is ground up the process usually involves heat – just the heat of the grinding mechanism. It turns out that heating that bone, as it is being ground up, very greatly reduces its usefulness!
But, if you take those same bones and grind them with a sophisticated low-temperature grinding process, including a freeze-drying step, it appears that some natural character of the bone is retained, in the powdered form. NOW it can be used by the body.
Polluted Bones
There IS one other problem with bone meal, besides the fact that the grinding subjects the bone to heat – that is that most of our cattle have polluted bones! They live in polluted areas, eat toxic grass and are often fed hormones and chemicals to increase their "value."
When laboratories have taken common calcium supplements, made of bone meal, and looked for toxic residue, they often find it!
Now you begin to get close to a good calcium supplement. It would come from bones of cattle raised to be free of the pollution.
Next, you would have to find a way to make it into such small particles that it can be easily absorbed through the intestine and into the body.
Microcrystalline Hydroxyapatite
There is only one natural form of such calcium and it HAS been subjected to many tests and scientific reports.
It’s called Microcrystalline Calcium Hydroxyapatite, but you won’t find it in many stores; it is mostly only sold by doctors.
The word microcrystalline simply means that the particles in this substance are extremely small.
Since it can only be honestly done from bones free of pollution, and with a sophisticated low temperature grinding and freeze-drying process – it is one of the most expensive forms of Calcium you can find.
HOWEVER, it can reverse osteoporosis!
When a calcium formula is made with this stuff as its source of calcium, there are then more factors which can greatly increase its value to the bone re-building process.
What Makes The
Fishnet Grow?
I mentioned that fish-net – the matrix into which the hunks of calcium stick. That matrix, too, needs special nutrition.
It turns out, again, that the very same bone which is ground up to make hydroxyapatite, grinds up, also, that very matrix material that existed in those bones.
That matrix is similar to cartilage, and in fact there are various names given to this material in bones. One of those is something called chondrotin sulfate.
The word chondrotin comes from the root chondro- which means a word related to cartilage. The full word, chondrotin has a complex chemical definition, but let’s leave it here that when you add some of this material to your "calcium" formula, the matrix becomes more capable of attracting and holding the hunks of calcium.
There are even more exciting ingredients which could be added to an advanced calcium formula. But, let’s look now at some of the more basic requirements.
Calcium cannot be absorbed into the fishnet without adequate vitamin D. You COULD get enough vitamin D from sunlight, but any calcium formula worth anything would include enough vitamin D so that, just in case you don’t get ANY sunshine, you could still use the calcium in the formula.
Likewise, I haven’t even touched on the need for including magnesium in large quantities, along with the calcium. I suggest that your calcium formula contain almost as much, or even AS much magnesium as calcium.
Finally, you need manganese, Vitamin K, Folic Acid, Boron, Vitamin B1, Zinc, Copper, Strontium, Silica, Vitamin C and it would be great to include some extra hydrochloric acid (HCl) to be on the safe side.
The Chondrotin Sulfate might be supplemented by including Glucosamine, about which I haven’t even had time to write a paragraph.
A few other ingredients might well be included, but you now have the basic requirements for reversing osteoporosis and building up bone density.
You see the need, you understand the process and you have my recommendation for how YOU can avoid death from bone fracture.
If you would now like an interesting experience, after having read Karl Loren's material about bones and calcium, compare the very traditional, and certainly very respected material published by the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I have excerpted a lengthy copyrighted article from the Britannica OnLine, a premium service on the net. Read what the Britannica has to say, then re-read Karl's material, and THEN write to tell Karl what you think!
Write to tell me of your successes using this type of formula.
|
I promise to answer your message -- click here to send me a personal message
|
SUBSCRIBE: The Wednesday Letter is a free electronic monthly newsletter written and published by Karl Loren. You can view more than 50 back issues of this publication by clicking here. The Wednesday Letter subscription list is maintained on a secure server, no name is ever given or sold to anyone, and it is never used except for this Newsletter. It is automatically published on the Tuesday night just before the first Wednesday of every month. You can subscribe to this free monthly electronic letter by entering your eMail address and name below. You will then automatically receive a request for confirmation, sent to whatever address you have entered. If you do NOT receive this confirmation request, then you will not be subscribed. There may have been an error with your address and you should resubmit. The letter is never sent twice to the same address -- so you do not have to worry about a duplicate subscription. When you receive this confirmation request you must reply to it, or your subscription will not become active. No one can subscribe your name, and address, without you being notified, and if you get an unwanted notice of subscription you only need to DO NOTHING and the subscription will NOT be active.
REMOVAL: You can remove yourself from the subscription list in several different ways. Click here to read about this entire newsletter system. Every edition of The Wednesday Letter is delivered to your address with YOUR name and address in view on the letter, with a link that allows you to remove THAT name from the subscription list. If you try to send this removal message from an address different from the one you used to send in your original confirmation, then you will get a warning notice first, sent to the subscription address, asking you to confirm that you want to be removed from the list -- by replying to THAT request for confirmation, you will then be automatically removed. Thus, no one else can unsubscribe you, from some other computer, without your knowledge. But, if you send in the unsubscribe notice from the same machine used to receive the Letter, then the removal from the subscription list is automatic.
Personal Message: When you send a personal message to Karl Loren, you will receive a personal reply as per his instructions. Karl pledges that every personal message will get a personal answer. When you provide your mail address, we will send you free information including our free catalog and a cassette tape lecture by Karl Loren about heart disease, no charge, by mail, even if outside the US. You can select particular information you would like to receive, along with the free cassette tape and catalog.
You can reach Vibrant Life in many ways, including by mail to Vibrant Life, 2808 N. Naomi St., Burbank, CA 91504. Within the US and Canada, use the toll free number: (800) 523-4521, the local number: (818) 558-1799, the FAX: (818) 558-7299, eMail to kimberly@oralchelation.com or any one of the hundreds of message forms throughout the 50 web sites. Vibrant Life normally ships the same day we get an order. There are message forms on each of the 100,000+ pages on this and other sites where you can communicate with Vibrant Life. Check out our companion site, at: http://www.oralchelation.net where Karl's 2000 page book is published. Karl Loren is the author and webmaster for this BOOK, as well as for another web site about ORAL CHELATION. His personal philosophical articles are at PHILOSOPHY.
Copyright © April 25, 2008 2:38 AM by Karl Loren on behalf of Vibrant Life, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Permission is granted for non-commercial downloading, copying, distribution or redistribution on two conditions: One, that some form of copyright notice is included in every copy distributed or copied, showing the copyright belonging to Vibrant Life, Burbank, CA, at www.oralchelation.com . The second condition is that the material is not to be used for any purpose contrary to the purposes and objectives of this site. This permission does not extend to materials on this site which are copyrighted by others.
