Health – Can You Feel It In Your Bones?
Scientist
say if you are fair skinned, small boned, with a family history of bone disease
or are of European or Asian descent, especially female gender, you may have a
predisposition for osteoporosis.
There
goes the neighborhood. These risk
factors are as omnipresent as Tim Horton franchises in B.C. It's enough to make one think “I knew I should
have picked a better family.” Statistics
can be discouraging when you can't change the risk factors. However just knowing your risks might be of
help in the choices you make for your life, just as if you knew there was a
high risk of a cold winter coming you could take steps to prepare for it.
Actually
there are more than 80 warning signs for this “supposedly silent” condition,
according to Pamela Levin, R.N., author of the book Perfect Bones. Included are such things as sudden insomnia, soft teeth, nightly leg
cramps, dowager's hump, back pain, being a smoker (no surprise), morning
stiffness...to name a few. Any one of
these things, says Levin, is significant to signal the risk of osteoporosis.
I
don't know about you, but 80 wake-up calls seem to me like being hit over the
head with a hammer. How could we not get
the message?
Bone
weakness and loss is just another indicator of long term malnutrition and
sedentary lifestyle. Many people think
osteoporosis is an adult-only disease when in fact it really begins in early
childhood with one’s food and activity choices. When did you start to drink pop and sugary
snacks and omit raw vegetables and whole foods from your diet? When did your definition of food include
over cooked, irradiated, genetically modified, and refined “products” passed
off to the unaware consumer as “food”?
When did your body begin to have to draw minerals and nutrients out of your
bones in order to fulfill the need for balanced raw materials not present in
our daily diet? When did you choose to
ride instead of walk to a destination of only a couple of blocks or take the
elevator up one floor?
Osteoporosis
is responsible for more than 1.5 million fractures annually, 700,000 of them in
the vertebrae of the spine and 300,000 in hips, at an estimated cost of more
than $14 billion each year. Other common fractures occur in wrists, forearms,
feet and toes. And of course, the rate
of occurrence is growing fast with the increase in the average age of our
population. Early detection and accurate
and immediate intervention is very important to the physical and financial
health of our nation.
Many
physicians are using bone mineral density testing (BMD) to detect an early
reason to medicate. Yet there are other
factors besides bone density that determine bone strength and resilience, and
some studies actually refute the idea that an increase in bone density will
reduce fracture rates. In Gambia,
Africa, for example, elderly women have lower bone mineral content by 10-24 per
cent compared to Canadians, yet their fracture rate is very low (less than 1
percent).
Clearly
there are lifestyle factors at work here.
No manner of research on medications or high tech methods of early
detection will find an answer that does not include a high nutrient diet and
appropriate weight bearing activities as the two crucial preventive means of keeping
our bones strong. Our bones can and
should be strong right through old age and beyond.
______________________________________________
Submitted as a public service by Cathy
Lidster, GCFP, ACNRT. She teaches “Bones
for Life” Movement classes and helps clients regain their health with diet and
lifestyle changes. For more information on Bones For Life®, Nutrition
Response® Testing, or next free health seminar in Spokane, Kamloops or
on line contact cathylidster@gmail.com, visit www.cathylidster.com
or call 250-819-9041
(Canada), 250-610-5756 (U.S).
No comments:
Post a Comment