Forteo, Not a Great Solution

July 10th, 2009

On Dr Susan Brown’s bone blog recently there was a great article about Forteo. I have had women ask me about it before but I wasn’t believing the good reports from it since they are so short term and seemed to come from the company that sells it. I also didn’t think too many of my weight vest customers would be interested in a drug that has to be injected daily and costs over $500- a month.

Anyway Dr Brown’s article is really well done and here is her bottom line:

“As near as I can calculate, since its development, studies on this drug have included only 1943 patients. According to the manufacturer, a study of one year is considered “long term,” while the maximum length of any study was only two years. Thus, not only is Forteo relatively new, but it is also experimental and, I would say, inadequately tested. In addition, it is very expensive — the drug costs upwards of $600–$700 per month! Further, it is inconvenient to use as it must be given as a daily self-administered injection. Most importantly, since this drug has shown to cause cancer in rat safety studies, its use by humans is limited to two years or less. While there may be significant bone density gains while using Forteo, the research is clear that these gains are lost once the drug is stopped. To maintain bone density gains, antiresorptive drugs such as Fosamax must be used after stopping Forteo.”

You can find the whole blog entry here.

Now here is a coincidence. This morning an old customer called me. She had bought a vest some years ago, loves it and still uses it faithfully, but she has many health issues that are causing her so lose bone. She is very tiny, has digestive problems that prevent absorbtion of her food and has had many broken bones. So she is obviously not your average woman. She was put on Forteo and hopes to build some bone in the two years her doctor told her she could stay on it. Her doctor told her that she has had thousands of patients who were on Forteo for two years and still kept the bone gain ten years later. This is obviously not a study of any kind but it is interesting input. Whenever someone says thousands I’m inclined to think they are given to exaggeration. How many severely osteoporitic patients can one doctor have? And twelve years ago when the drug was new? But she is in Miami where lots of older folks live so maybe it’s true.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that there are many opinions, many stories, often many conflicting studies with different outcomes, and we are all different. This woman needs to do everything she can to build bone. She actually called me to ask how I was doing with the bio-identical hormones so I will update that in the next post.

Many of the women reading this will be younger and will not have to take drugs that may later turn out to be dangerous, if they take care of their bones with diet and exercise early enough.

So get with the program, women, start pumping out those hindu squats as if your wellbeing depended on it. How hard is it to do 5 every time you go to the bathroom? They will help with elimination at the same time as build muscle and balance.

Enjoy some sunshine today,
Pam

Posted in Bone Drugs, Bone Stories, Osteo-News | No Comments »

Would You Like to Lose Some Weight?

June 30th, 2009

It seems as if half the women who call me to check sizing for a weight vest say they plan on losing weight soon. I always wonder how long they have been saying that. ;-) I do remember from before I was on special diabetes diets that there was always about ten or so pounds that I was intending to lose.

I heard recently about a man who was over 300 pounds and had tried everything under the sun to lose weight. His name is Jon Gabriel and he wrote ” The Gabriel Method”. He talks about the mind being the most important factor in losing weight, rather than anything you may or may not be eating. I sent for the book because I’m always fascinated by mind power stuff and I thought that maybe I could do the opposite of whatever he said and put on a few pounds.

Well, the book is a total delight. It includes a downloadable mp3 track that you listen to before sleeping every night that is really one of the best hypnotic inductions I have ever heard. You have to be a bit careful listening to other people’s affirmations usually, but he doesn’t say one thing I wouldn’t say myself.

So his premise is that our bodies feel safer being fat because of famine in our history. We have to convince them that it really would be safer for us to be lean and strong. I loved the mp3 because it is full of positive messages, so I changed it so that every time he said anything about losing weight my voice pops up with ‘gaining muscle’ instead. It is working like a charm. I have been doing the bodyweight exercises that I mentioned in a previous post but must know how hard it is to gain muscle after 60. So the fact that I can actually see muscle definition in my arms at this point feels like a miracle to me.

I’m on a personal odyssey of transformation right now. I was inspired by getting off the thyroid and adrenal meds. I figured if I can do that then my body has unlimited potential for positive change. So now I am intent on gaining muscle, improving my eyesight, thickening my skin and thickening my hair. I’ll keep you posted!

Getting back to Jon Gabriel, I had written an email to him when I got the book asking what he thought about my using it to gain weight and his secretary called and said that he’d like to answer that personally and he would call me. The man lives in Australia, for pete’s sake!. Not only that but he doesn’t make permanent residual income from selling miracle supplements that his readers can’t live without. He is just selling his book and hoping to help many people who are as desperate as he was before he figured this out.

I got the call last week and it confirmed what I thought when I first heard his voice on the mp3. This guy is a gem! He was concerned about my diet. Everyone is when they hear I eat almost all fruit so I expected that. But he was very helpful and caring and when I get my after picture of me with muscle I will certainly send in a testimonial.

So get the book. It’s full of really good information and very well-written. You don’t even have to change your diet in the beginning. Like the weight vest, as you start feeling better, you move around more, well, with this you start feeling better so you don’t want to keep eating junk. But you stop yourself naturally by preferring something better. This would be a great summertime read for you and could be life-changing. Find out more at his site - http://www.gabrielmethod.com.au/

Here’s to saying goodbye to that lingering few pounds that your body is hanging onto so it doesn’t starve to death in a downturn.

Namaste, Pam

Posted in About Me, Diet, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Some bone news

June 1st, 2009

Dr Mercola of mercola.com had a good article on bones this month, particularly about people taking too much calcium. Nothing new if you’ve been reading this blog but it’s good that the news is getting closer to mainstream. You can find it through his search engine by putting in ‘Can calcium make bones weaker’.

Then Dr Brown’s newsletter talked about a study that proves 10 prunes a day builds bone. I believe this but I also think fresh fruit would do the job better. They didn’t test that because they were looking for a widely available substance and prunes, like bananas, are available pretty much everywhere.

I think that it would be difficult to eat 10 prunes a day for ever, even after you get over the initial diarrhea, and it would also be pretty costly.

The last piece of news is the most interesting. The army has developed a bone putty for soldiers with bad bone breaks. It surrounds the bone and serves as a matrix to hold it together while it is healing, then it dissolves and leaves the body. Sounds pretty amazing.

“The fracture putty will serve as a bioactive scaffold and will be able to substitute for the damaged bone,” said principal researcher Mauro Ferrari. “At the same time, the putty will facilitate the formation of natural bone and self-healing in the surrounding soft tissue through the attraction of the patient’s own stem cells. The putty will have the texture of modeling clay so that it can be molded in any shape in order to be used in many different surgical applications, including the reconnection of separated bones and the replacement of missing bones.”

This material could have the patient up and around in as little as a week, according to the researchers.

The funny part is that they say if it does work out as planned they will eventually use it on civilians who have been in car accidents, etc. It doesn’t cross any of their minds that it would be great for older women with hip fractures. We are obviously totally out of their frame of reference. But the reason why hip fractures for women are so detrimental is that they take so long to heal and cause complete immobility. It’s usually the lying around that kills them, not the actual fracture.

I read it on a Cnet news article but I won’t link to it because the links never last long. Google bone putty and you’ll find it. It certainly is amazing what they are doing with medical research that doesn’t involve drugs. When soldiers are the target the research is more likely to be around new techniques, equipment and supplies because the government isn’t interested in putting its soldiers on a myriad of drugs.

I read a very interesting letter from Micheal More today where he said that General Motors invented ‘planned obsolescence’. They decided to build cars that would fall apart in two years so you would have to buy another one. He makes the case that this was flagrant disregard of the well-being of their customers and was the beginning of their downfall.

I’m hoping that the opposite tack of BigPharma - to put all Americans on drugs forever that don’t heal us but just mask the symptoms so we will keep buying - will be their downfall. We aren’t stupid, after all, and our natural trust in the medical system has been eroded. The ones who trusted doctors implicitly, no matter what, are dying off now and the young ones are too smart to go there.

Funny - a woman wrote me an email a while back saying that she wanted to buy a vest but she couldn’t support someone who put out such evil misinformation about the bone drugs. She wrote a rant about me and how bad I was. I didn’t reply because there was no point but I felt like asking why she needed to buy a vest if her pills were working so well.

Take care,

Pam

Posted in Bone Drugs, Current Affairs, Osteo-News, Uncategorized | No Comments »

#1 Best All-round Exercise

April 22nd, 2009

You may know that I hate gyms and I do bodyweight exercises and rebounding to keep fit. So I want you to know the absolute best exercise you can do for all around fitness - the king of exercises. It is squats. On my exercise list I use door squats for beginners so that they are safe for older sedentary women. But you can soon graduate up to regular freestanding squats and then go on to more powerful Hindu squats.

Squats will strengthen your legs but also your back and give you better balance. You will feel more powerful from your core.  An exercise program I subscribed to recently said that if there was only one exercise you had time to do then it should be hindu squats.

Back in the day, when I was a Feldenkrais practitioner, I was taught that a person’s ability to squat was the best reflection of their overall fitness. Most people over the world squat every day. It is the way they sit, and certainly the way they use the toilet.

But westerners have lost that easy ability to settle down comfortably close to the ground. I think that loss has a lot to do with our lack of balance as we get older. Moshe Feldenkrais always taught that a person should be able to leap in any direction at any moment to be safe. Squats, repeated daily, give you this power in your legs and spine to move quickly when necessary.

Since it has been proven that it is actually not the thickness of your bones that prevents fractures in your older years, but the ability to avoid falling, it is worth a few minutes a day to brush up on the skill of squatting.

I was showing a neighbor the way to practise hindu squats the other day and she immediately discounted it by saying she had never been able to squat, even as a child. ANYONE can learn this. It is a natural thing for any body to do. It may be hard at first, your thighs may hate you, but persist. When you can do 25 squats in a row you are on the way to true power in your body.

The exercise program I was talking about wants you to do 200 a day. I think that is excessive and boring. But you could do 25 twice a day and then three times a day, before meals perhaps, and see your vitality and power soar.

Hindu squats are the best for doing the 25 in a row because you use your breath and arms to help build momentum. If you want to learn these go to youtube and put hindu squats in the search engine. The breath is out on the way down and in on the way up and you move fast enough to get a breath exercise at the same time.

These are a real life-changer. If you are in fear of your bones giving out on you then commit to doing  this and see how much better you will feel in 30 days.

Enjoy,
Pam

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New Article About Bone Density

April 7th, 2009

Susan Brown, Phd, of the Better Bones book and site, has remodeled her site and started a new blog. She does recommend my weight vest for her clients. Her first article is about the common myths of Osteoporosis and Osteopenia. It’s all the same stuff I’ve been telling you but it’s good to have it all in one place so you probably will want to read it here.

For people in a hurry the most interesting part is that bone density still has not been proven to have much to do with bone fractures. People find this hard to believe but it’s true. People with thin bones fracture and people with normal bones fracture. It really depends on the kind of fall you have.

Dr Brown says, “Nature in all her wisdom has provided each of us with plenty of surplus bone. We have such a large bone mass safety reserve, in fact, that even with an osteoporotic bone density, we still have enough bone mass to withstand the stresses and strains of daily activity without ever fracturing a single bone.

Bones that fracture are weak because they lack the ability to repair themselves properly from the micro fractures that regularly occur due to normal stress and strain. Thus, bone which fractures isn’t only thin, but also of poor quality with diminished self-repair capability. Self-repair can be inhibited by many factors, including lack of nutrients and exercise, an acid-forming diet, various medications, an overload of chemicals and pollutants, and the like.”

She also has a great quote from Dr Susan Ott about bisphosphonate drugs, “Many people believe that these drugs are ‘bone builders,’ but the evidence shows they are actually bone hardeners.”

The reason for the confusion is that in bone density tests, Fosamax often appears to increase bone density. As Dr. Ott explains, “This is because the bone is no longer remodeling, and so there is not much new bone. The older bone is denser than the newer bone; there is less water and more mineral in the bone, and the radiographic techniques thus measure the higher density.”

This is why I have so many women calling now who have been on the bone drugs for a year or five years, who had higher Dexa numbers at first and now their numbers are dropping radically. I wonder how long it will take their bones to recover from those chemicals and start building normally again.

Bone building requires movement of muscles pulling on the bone with the addition of weights, that’s why my weightvest works so well. It’s the easiest way to build strength and bone doing your normal life.

Enjoy your Spring, wherever you are,
Pam

Posted in Bone Drugs, Osteo-News, Weblogs | No Comments »

Update on the Rawfood Diet

March 23rd, 2009

Hello there,

It’s been almost 4 months and I’m still on the raw vegan 80-10-10 diet although I’m not 100% raw right now. I got really tired of the limitations of the diet. You can eat all of the raw fruit and raw leafy greens you want and pretty much everything else is not allowed.

I thought I would never get tired of fruit but I did. Breakfast is fine. I make a fruit soup of papaya, strawberries, kiwis, pears, whatever I have, and I also have a grapefruit. Snack at mid-morning is two bananas and lunch is a fruit soup with lettuce, spinach and celery added. That tastes surprisingly good and is a change from the sweetness.

It’s dinner that is the problem for me. I just don’t seem to be able to face another fruit-based meal. I could have salad, and often do, but without dressing salad is pretty boring. So I’ve been making green soup out of steamed broccoli and veggies. I just steam them for 5 minutes and then blenderize them but they are cooked.

The truth is I am feeling less ebullient on the diet now I have added back some cooked food. I seem to be maintaining the health benefits. I am totally off the thyroid and adrenal medication and I’m weaning off the stuff that stops my blood pressure from going too low. My pulse is down to 75 from over 100 before. My brain is clear and I’m exercising well, doing some fun bodyweight exercises.

People have asked about my Omega 3 levels, protein levels and B12. I downloaded Cronometer for free and check all that stuff and the fruit and leafy greens give me all I need in the way of nutrition, 10% fat, 10% protein and 80% carbs. Vitamin D has to come from the sun or a supplement but B12 I think is sufficient. If not I can always do a sub-lingual once a week. This way of eating has got to be really good for my bones because of all the natural calcium and magnesium that I’m getting. It’s truly the best source of minerals because they are fully assimilated by the body, unlike supplements.

I think the diet is hard for me right now because the winter fruits are not as abundant and varied as summer fruits. When the apricots and cherries and figs come in I will be happy to eat them all day long.

I still have abundant energy and am working on remodeling my house instead of sitting in front of the computer all day. There is a great support forum for the 801010 diet and I think I would have given up before now if not for them. It’s here in case you are interested.

So the bottom line is that I’m really glad I found the diet and it has been life-changing but the cons are that it is very limited and kills my social life. I just can’t peacefully sit and watch people eat cooked food without wanting it, depending on what it is. That day will come but it’s not here yet.

I read a great article about what happens in your body when you drink a Coke - or any other soft drink. It is pretty mind-blowing. You can read it here as contrast to my diet news.

The only other piece of news is that I’m thinking of putting Google ads on this site to help pay the site bills. I could exclude drug companies but they are the ones that pay the click money. So if you have an opinion about this let me know by email.

Take care
Pam

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Successful Bone Building Program

March 2nd, 2009

I got some great news last week from a customer and her testimonial has an interesting point that I’ll go over later. Here it is:

Last year I purchased your weight vest after receiving negative results on my bone density test which showed rapid bone loss over 2 years. I began wearing the vest on walks, taking “muscle pump” classes at YMCA, supplements (calcium, magnesium, Vit D, multi-minerals, multiple vit, K, C), bio-identical progesterone cream [Emerita], and diet.

In one year (from Feb-08 to Feb-09) my scores improved significantly. My doctor said 2-3% doubles bone strength–I exceeded 3% in both locations!
 
T-Score Test results below:
Date            Age            T Scores
                                   Hip       Spine
10/06          54          -1.4         -2.3
*2/08          56          -2.3        -2.9      *started wearing vest Mar-08
2/09            57          -2.2        -2.8

1-yr improvement      4.34%     3.45%
 
My physician, Dr. Kochumian, was extremely sceptical last year when I refused to take Fosomax, and previously when he prescribed Boniva, but agreed to see what would happen in 1 year. He was amazed at my results!
Carol

What I didn’t realize before was that 2-3% improvement equals doubled bone strength. Some women have been disappointed when their T-scores have only gone up one or two points, but according to this doctor they are doing very well with that improvement.

As Carol said later in her email, it wasn’t easy to get the bone gain. She had to work at it, but the working gave her many other gains in her life as well. You can exercise and eat right because of your bones but your whole body is affected. That’s why I call our post-menopausal bone thinning a great wake-up call for women. It tells us it’s time to stop the downward slide into ignominous old age and bounce back.

Have an active life,
Pam

Posted in Bone Stories, Exercise, Testimonials, Uncategorized | No Comments »

OK, Blog Moved

February 26th, 2009

This is a test post. I have moved the blog and it should work well.

If you want to get the blog regularly you can subscribe to the RSS feed on the right panel.

Or just bookmark this page if that’s what you did before and it will work fine. But, when you bookmark, you have to remember to check for posts so the RSS feed is better.

I have a My Yahoo home page, which I highly recommend, so I just clicked the My Yahoo button and now the blog shows up on my page.
But if you don’t have that, then click one of the other buttons and it will show up on the rss feeder that you have.

I’m not totally clear on that so let me know if you have problems and I’ll figure it out.

I think I will change the font size on that sidebar also.

The archives should all be there and there is a search function now.

I will still have comments disabled because I had a terrible time with comment spam before. So, if you have a comment about a post, just email it to me.

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Changing Blogging Platforms

February 16th, 2009

I’ve been meaning to change my blogging platform for over a year now. I’m unhappy with Typepad for many reasons and I am moving to Wordpress soon. Hopefully you won’t notice much difference and I will try to migrate all the old posts to the new blog. But it will be better under the hood. The RSS feeds will work finally so that you can have the blog fed to your homepage and I’ll tell you how to do it.

What motivated me to get on with it finally is that two people asked why they weren’t getting their newsletters. I don’t do newsletters because I hate to get a bunch of email myself so I let you bookmark and find your own way here. But I know there are better ways so you don’t miss any news. RSS is one better way and it stopped working on Typepad in one of their revisions.

It’s going to take me a while because I have to read the “Wordpress for Dummies” book first, which is why I’ve been putting this off for so long. The web never stays put and if you ignore it you get left behind, but I can’t say that mucking about with code and css tags is my favorite way to spend a week. And I’m totally out of the habit now. But when I’m done with this I will start changing the websites about a bit and maybe start a new one on the rawfood diet.

I think now I’m feeling more lively I am ready for a bit more success and abundance so I need to get up to date with the websites to pull that in.

Anyway I’m warning you because, if you’ve bookmarked this page, it won’t be on the same page any more. You will have to go to weightvest4osteoporosis.com or osteo-solutions.com and click blog on the sidebar to find the right page again. Then you can bookmark it and hopefully it will be in the same place until I’m dead and gone - which will be a long while yet.

So now I’m committed, the die is cast. My next post will be on the new and better blog. Pam

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Exercise - A Delicate Subject

February 4th, 2009

This is a delicate subject for two groups of women - those who need to get up off their tush and move around more, and those who exercise like it’s a drug they can’t give up.

We all need exercise to keep us strong and healthy into old age, everyone will acknowledge that. But I have been amazed at how many younger women are calling me with bone loss and fears about osteopenia and osteoporosis. Most of them eat relatively healthy, don’t drink sodas and workout regularly, and can’t understand why this is happening to them.

Now I find that the conclusion I had come to, that they are overexercising, is becoming more widespread. If you google ‘over-exercising’ you will find a lot of information and opinions. The trouble is that it is mostly opinion.

My opinion is that if you are exercising enough to kick in endorphins, that is in length of time or intensity, you are probably not doing your bones, or longterm health, too much good. Our bodies like moderation, they like balance. The reason we have endorphin release upon exercise is to give us strength to get away from tigers and bears and disasters. We were never designed to use that release on a daily basis. That’s why marathoners are no longer lived than the general population. Our own endorphins are as powerful as heroin and most women who exercise to excess wouldn’t dream of using that.

These women don’t want to hear about lowering their exercise levels even to benefit their bones. They definitely are addicted to exercise. Some have body image issues, some are using exercise in the same way many women use food, to suppress emotions.

What is true is that our bodies can do one of three things at one time; move, digest food, or feel our emotions. That is why many emotional release programs have you dance and move around vigorously to get to another emotional place. That works, but, in the long run, we have to feel our emotions fully or they will come back to haunt us.

If I feel and acknowledge every emotion as it occurs then it doesn’t get stuck in my body and need to be covered up with cookies or a jog. One good technique is to notice where in your body you are feeling the emotion and put your hands right there. Then feel it fully. Then exaggerate it. If someone said you need to lose weight you say whatever is in your mind - she hates me, I’m obese, I’m useless, etc… whatever comes up. Keep on exaggerating until you finally have to come to a place where it’s funny, it’s hilarious.

We can’t stop people we love or people we work with inflicting their opinions on us. Many people would much rather look at someone else’s perceived problems than deal with their own. But it becomes hilarious when someone who can barely move tells us that we are too skinny or working too hard. I’ve had both comments a lot since starting the rawfood diet because I have lost weight and have so much energy that I am creating new things all day.

Just bless people and know that they think they are speaking out of love and concern, then get back to giving your body what it really needs - fresh, clean food, sunshine, plenty of rest, appreciation, love and the right amount of exercise.

Next post will be about my progress on the rawfood diet. Pam

 

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