If you've been told you have osteoporosis, do you really know what this disease is and how it affects you? It may not be what you think it is.

I've learned that if you live long enough, just about everything changes, even definitions of diseases. Sometimes these definitions help by telling us more specifically what's going on and what we need to do to correct a situation.

Other times they just add to our confusion. I know of no disease — or condition — that fits this category as well as osteoporosis. The definition of osteoporosis has changed, and with this change has come more confusion.

Here are some common myths surrounding osteoporosis, along with clarifying information to help you make better decisions about protecting your bones and your overall health. They all begin with a different definition of osteoporosis.

Myth #1: If you have lost bone density, you have osteoporosis.

At one time, osteoporosis was considered to be a disease that was defined by broken bones. If your bones broke, you had osteoporosis; if you had no fractures, you didn't have this disease. Now doctors consider osteoporosis to be a condition where bones have lost some of their density — which is a normal part of aging. This changing definition means that everyone over the age of 50 has osteoporosis and needs to take something to increase their bone density, whether or not their bones are fragile and break easily. Not true at all!

Truth: Brittle bones that break indicate osteoporosis.

All of us lose some bone density as we age, but not all of us break any bones. Bone brittleness is a key factor in whether or not your bones will break when you fall, but it's a subject that's rarely discussed. One reason is that there's no way to measure brittleness and the medical community is reluctant to talk about any subject for which it has no answers. But to ignore a primary cause for fractures like bone fragility is unconscionable.

Another reason brittleness isn't discussed is that increasing bone density is big business. Pharmaceutical companies are getting rich selling hormones to frightened women. Supplement companies are making a fortune pushing calcium pills even when supplemental calcium is unnecessary and can contribute to heart disease and arthritis.

Unfortunately, neither hormones nor calcium are the answer to fragile bones that are an integral part of osteoporosis. Excessive calcium, as I'll explain later on, makes bones more brittle and more likely to break.

Myth #2: Bone mineral-density tests accurately predict future fractures.

Have you had a bone scan lately? I haven't, because one of the myths of osteoporosis is that measuring your bone density is an effective way of determining whether or not you're likely to break any bones. It's not!

Bone mass — which is all that bone density tests can measure — is not an accurate prediction of fractures. It doesn't take into account the structure of your bones. Flexible bones are less likely to break than fragile bones, regardless of size.

Truth: DXA scans give limited information.

Bone density is usually measured with dual X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), which doesn't measure your bone density at all. The DXA test measures the amount of calcium you have in your bones.

Now, listen carefully to this next part. If the calcium in your bones is a little low, but you have plenty of magnesium, you will build strong, flexible bones. However, a DXA test can measure only the low calcium content and will most likely indicate that your bones are at risk for breaking when the opposite may be true. Sufficient magnesium (up to bowel tolerance, with a maximum of 1,000 mg/day), even with low calcium (500-800 mg/day), will help form less brittle bones that don't break easily.

Another problem with bone density tests is that they measure only the density in one particular bone. Bone is living tissue, and the mineral content in one bone is rarely identical with the minerals in another. If you happen to have any calcium deposits in the area that's being tested, your results will inaccurately reflect dense bones.

Bottom line: The problem is not bone mass, but bone strength. DXA can only measure bone mass.

Myth #3: Low estrogen causes osteoporosis.

Estrogen can prevent the loss of bone tissue, which means it can reduce your risk for osteoporosis if you begin taking it right at menopause. But it doesn't have any effect on the formation of new bone tissue. What's more, if you begin taking estrogen and then stop using it, your bone loss can accelerate. In addition, we know that synthetic estrogens and progestins have side
effects.

Truth: Natural progesterone helps build bones.

All of us go through menopause, but not all of us break any bones, even women who are not on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) who have serious falls. Why is this? It may not be a lack of estrogen at all, but rather low levels of progesterone. Estrogen helps prevent bone loss, but progesterone appears to promote bone formation. We don't yet know if there are any long-term side effects from taking natural hormones. I would use natural hormones like progesterone only as a last resort after levels have been checked, and taken under the direction of a qualified health practitoner.

Myth #4: Taking calcium supplements prevents osteoporosis.

Repeat after me: "High calcium intake causes bones to form that are brittle. Magnesium causes bones to form that are strong and flexible. I need plenty of magnesium and enough, but not too much, calcium."

I've told you many times in past articles, but it bears repeating: If your bones are thin, strong, and flexible, they won't break when you fall. If they're brittle, they will, even if they're dense. Brittleness causes bones to break!

Many people with vested interests are giving out old information. The dairy industry and supplement companies that sell calcium pills are two of them. A review of nearly 60 studies on dairy consumption and bones published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (vol. 72, 2000) concluded that there was not enough evidence to support recommending dairy products for osteoporosis prevention.

Truth: Most women need more magnesium.

Magnesium helps build strong, flexible bones. That's why I suggest a diet low in dairy products and high in dark green, leafy vegetables and beans — foods that contain both calcium and magnesium. Your supplements should contain equal amounts of each of these minerals — around 500 mg. This amount is usually sufficient for someone on a healthy diet. If you're eating dairy daily, you may want to add more magnesium to your diet and supplements. Magnesium is high in whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds, and dark green, leafy vegetables.

Want more details on this subject?

You can find them in my User's Guide to Calcium and Magnesium, which is available from Basic Health Publications (2002). For order information, call 800-728-2288.

Levin, Pamela, RN. Perfect Bones, Celestial Arts, 2002.National Women's Health Network. The Truth About Hormone Replacement Therapy, Prima Publishing, 2002.

Sanson, Gillian. The Myth of Osteoporosis, MCD Century Publications, 2003.

The Best Cold Remedies I've Ever Found

So head colds knock you out of commission for two or three weeks? Is bronchitis or pneumonia the natural progression of every cold you get? Does the lingering cough drag on and on, sometimes for a month or more? Do you spend a small fortune every winter on cough medicines, cold and flu combinations, and drugs that help you sleep through your misery?

That's a perfect description of me from the time I was a little child until a few years ago. Nearly every head cold I had progressed to bronchitis or pneumonia. Every winter I was miserable. Then I decided to do something about it — and so can you.

Six years ago, I decided to break this cycle. I tried every cold remedy I could find that professed to work. Some did; others had no noticeable effect. I finally found a handful of products that continually work for me. I take some or all of them at the first sign of a cold and these early symptoms rarely continue. I don't get colds or bronchitis, and my lungs are stronger than ever.

Respiratory and immune problems become more common as you age and frequent colds and pneumonia can be warning signs of lowered immunity. Don't wait to come down with more serious immune problems or depend on a flu shot. Flu shots protect against only a few specific strains of flu, and the vaccine contains contaminants you don't want in your body like formaldehyde and a mercury derivative. For better, safer protection, here are the best cold remedies I've ever found. They helped me stop the cycle and I know they can help you, too.

Medicinal mushrooms

One reason I got colds every year was that my immune system wasn't strong. The most effective immune-enhancing products I've ever used are medicinal mushrooms. I credit them with keeping me healthy for the past six years.

Mushrooms have been used in China for over 3,000 years to support the immune system, strengthen the lungs, and fight cancer. Some popular medicinal mushrooms include Agaricus, Cordyceps, Coriolus, Maitake, Reishi, Shiitake, and Umbellatus. There are dozens and dozens of scientific studies on each of these medicinal mushrooms that have convinced me of their safety and effectiveness. You can find different mushroom combinations in health food stores. I originally used one teaspoon of TriMycoGen powder, or six capsules, a day (Gourmet Mushrooms, 707-823-1743). It contains Cordyceps, Maitake, and Reishi. One jar of the powder lasts two to three months.

Now I use a much stronger formula that has been studied in clinical trials: MycoPhyto Complex. It consists of six varieties of medicinal mushrooms grown on Chinese immune-enhancing herbs. The herbs strengthen the effects of the mushrooms, so I need only one capsule twice a day (800-728-2288).

Usnea

Usnea is the best herb I know of to stop a cold in its tracks. As soon as I feel the slightest beginning of a sore throat or cold, or when I've been exposed to sick people, I take one dropper full of Usnea every hour until the symptoms are gone — usually from one hour to one day.

Usnea is a unique combination of lichen and fungus that live off one another. It's both antibacterial and antiviral and will work on a cold, flu, or bacterial infection.

The active ingredients in Usnea are soluble in alcohol, so look for an alcohol-based tincture. A hot alcohol extraction is the most effective. You can find excellent Usnea tinctures from Herb Pharm (800-348-HERB) or Eclectic Institute (888-799-4372). Both may be found in some health food stores.

Zicam cold remedy

The good news is that Zicam works, and you can probably find it today at your local drugstore, Costco, Walgreens, or Target (or call 877-942-2626). Zicam Cold Remedy is a homeopathic nasal gel containing zinc. You swab it inside your nostrils with a cotton swab every two hours at the first sign of a cold for one day, then just three times daily.

A study of over 200 people found that Zicam shortens the duration of a cold by 75 percent. When I use it right away, along with medicinal mushrooms and Usnea, I don't get a cold. It also works on its own.

Echinacea plus herb tea

Echinacea Plus herb tea, a blend of various immune-supporting varieties of Echinacea, is an inexpensive cold remedy made by Traditional Medicinals, Inc. Each tea bag contains the same amount of active ingredients as the next. This results in a consistently effective tea. Make sure that you steep the tea bag in boiling water for 10-15 minutes before drinking it for the highest potency.

Echinacea Plus was tested in a double-blind study. When people drank five to six cups of tea on the first day they had any cold symptoms, and reduced the amount each consecutive day by one up, their colds averaged from one to two days. The control group had colds for six to 10 days. If Echinacea Plus is not in your local health food store or supermarket, call Natural Resources (800-747-0390).

Resveratrol

Grape seeds and grape skin contain powerful antioxidants. One of them, a bioflavonoid called proanthocyanidin, or PCO, is 20 times more potent than vitamin C. Perhaps that's why Resveratrol Plus, a formula of grape seed extract, grape skin extract, and bioflavonoids works so well to stop colds and flu.

My editor found it reduced his cold symptoms. So I took two tablets, three times a day at the first sign of cold symptoms and continued taking this amount for a few days after I was symptom-free. It worked!

The ingredients in Resveratrol Plus strengthen capillaries, prevent blood clots, relax the walls of arteries to the heart, and destroy cancer cells, so now I take one tablet twice a day along with my other supplements. You can use it preventively, like I do, or just when you're coming down with a cold or flu(call 800-728-2288 to order).

If all else fails — Clear Lung Plus

My brother, Hal, found this herbal remedy containing 10 percent colloidal silver, and it helped my mother when she had intractable bronchitis or pneumonia. The formula contains wild cherry, pleurisy root, comfrey, mullein, hyssop, hops, and marshmallow root — all excellent herbs for the lungs. The colloidal silver is an important ingredient with antibacterial and antiviral activities.

Clear Lung Plus is effective for wet or dry coughs, asthma, lung congestion, and phlegm. You can buy it directly from its formulator, Brian Roeteger, DC (310-457-1775 or [email protected]). A two-ounce bottle costs $20.95 and lasts about two weeks. If you find it works well for you, get the larger four-ounce size.

Evaulate Your Breast Cancer Treatment With Thermography

What if you could know before having surgery whether or not the chemotherapy treatment for your breast cancer was working?

What if you could also monitor the effectiveness of complementary therapies like modified citrus pectin (MCP), progesterone, or artemisinin?

Well, John Keyserlingk, a medical doctor in Canada, recently completed a study showing that breast thermography can tell just how well chemotherapy is working. If it can follow the results of chemotherapy, thermography can be used to monitor other treatments, as well. And if your treatment is working, surgery and additional medications may be totally unnecessary.

Breast thermography, also known also as digital infrared imaging (DII), uses an infrared camera to take a picture of the heat patterns in your breasts. As cancer cells begin to cluster, they look for a food supply – blood vessels. If none are near, new ones are produced. This is called neoangiogenesis. These new blood vessels and increased blood flow create heat that is detected by the infrared images. There are also other, more subtle, indications of abnormalities that only experienced, highly trained doctors can find.

Is surgery really necessary?

Dr. Keyserlingk is a surgical oncologist at the Ville Marie Medical Center in Canada. He wanted to know whether or not surgery was necessary for women with breast cancer who were on chemotherapy. He headed a team of MDs who selected a group of women with locally advanced breast cancer. These women would ordinarily be given chemotherapy before having their cancers removed surgically. Dr. Keyserlingk wanted to see if digital infrared imaging (DII) could follow this treatment without the risks from radiation or other invasive monitoring tools.

He recruited 20 women with advanced breast cancer and took thermograms of their breasts before and after various chemotherapy treatments for three to six months. They then removed these women's breasts. I know. It was a pretty radical treatment. But the women consented, of course, and the results were so carefully monitored that we now know more about what thermography can do.

All of the women originally had abnormal readings in the area of their tumors and all of their tumors decreased by the end of the treatment. Thermograms indicated that four of them had no detectible cancer. The removed breasts were biopsied, and the results paralleled those seen on thermograms. The women who showed no activity on their thermograms had no breast cancer. Those who had indications of an improvement had smaller tumors.

But the implications for using thermography as a monitoring tool goes way beyond chemotherapy. It looks like it may be effective in monitoring other therapies, as well, like the use of modified citrus pectin (MCP), progesterone, and artemisinin. In fact, breast thermography should be particularly effective in helping to determine how well therapies that reduce angiogenesis, like MCP, are working. This way, if your treatment isn't working, your doctor can suggest another one.

The future of breast thermography

Clearly, breast thermography is giving us more information than other more invasive techniques like mammograms and needle biopsies. Not only can it detect suspicious activity that may be ... or may lead to ... breast cancer, now we know it can also give us immediate feedback on whether or not a particular therapy is working.

It's true that in the past some thermography equipment was substandard. And even now, some centers use older equipment. What's worse, some thermograms are read by people who lack the training necessary to write these reports. That's why I'm giving some guidelines for finding the right thermography center — and interpreter (see the box below).

For a list of thermography centers with extremely high standards,highly trained staff, and excellent equipment, go to www.breastthermography.com. Click on "Contact Our Center," which will take you to a site where you can find centers near you. If you don't have a computer, your library does and your librarian will help you. If you don't use computers at all, call Dr. William Amalu, who heads a thermography center and trains thermologists. He's in California and can be reached at 650-361-8908.

Nutrition Detective

Bean Sprouts and Breast Cancer Treatment

A Vietnamese pharmaceutical company is making a supplement to protect breast cancer patients from damage caused by radiation. The product, called Vitexina, is made from the common mung bean – the same bean used to grow bean sprouts found in all supermarkets and used in Oriental cooking. Vitexina's primary ingredients are two flavonoids found in the mung bean (Vigna radiata) called vitexin and isovitexin.

In Vietnam, mung beans have been used traditionally, both to detoxify and for diseases of excess heat. A series of studies indicate that these flavonoids contain antioxidants that protect against radiation damage. In one study, all patients who took 400 mg of Vitexina a day for six weeks reported an absence of headaches, fatigue, poor sleep, poor appetite, and restlessness associated with radiation.

How can research on this obscure supplement help you? If you're undergoing radiation treatment, you may want to add mung beans to your daily diet. You can make a soup out of the dried beans (they can be found at most health food stores and all Oriental markets) and add a giant handful or two of bean sprouts in your stir-fry, salads, or soups. Will you get as much of the active flavonoids in the beans and bean sprouts as in the Vitexina capsules? Perhaps not, but just like miso soup, used by the Japanese to counter the effects of radiation from the atomic bomb, mung beans may be an important protective food at a critical time in your cancer treatment. In fact, you may want to add cooked mung beans or bean sprouts to a cup of miso soup for double protection.

Van Hien, T., et al. "Radioprotective effects of Vitexina for breast cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy with Cobalt-60," Integrative Cancer Therapies, 2002; 1(1):38-43.

Ask Dr. Nan

Q: I have had nine upper teeth pulled over the past few years. Is there anything I can do to stop bone loss besides implants? I have been taking magnesium and calcium on the ratio you have suggested (2:1). — S.A., West Yarmouth, MA

A: The proper amounts of calcium and magnesium are vital to good bone health, but they're not the whole answer. Boron, silica, and vitamin K are all important in building healthy bones. That's why I asked the vitamin formulators I work with to come up with more bone protection than Vitality Plus. Their answer, and one I take daily, is Bone Support (800-728-2288). But ... supplements are not all that's needed to save your teeth.

Your gums keep your teeth in place. A loss of so many teeth over a short period of time points to periodontal disease — inflammation and infection of your gums. I spoke with dentist Thomas McGuire, DDS, author of the excellent book Tooth Fitness. He says you may need to have your teeth cleaned six or more times a year.

What's most important is that you have to find out what you need to do on a daily basis. This would most likely include brushing, flossing, using rubber tips or toothpicks, and irrigating your gums. Eliminate all sources of bacteria that you can. This means having a clean toothbrush. One study found that 49 percent of toothbrushes contained bacteria from feces. If your toothbrush makes tiny cuts in your gums, these bacteria can keep you from solving your periodontal problems. You can sterilize your toothbrush daily by steaming it with a new device called the Germ Terminator. For more information, call 800-247-1000, or go to www.germterminator.com. Mention Women's Health Letter when you phone in your order and you can get it for $69, including the all-purpose basket that cleans manicuring tools, which sells for $19.95.

In addition, your diet must be low in all forms of sugar to reduce bacteria in your mouth that contribute to gum disease. For detailed information on good mouth hygiene, you may want to get a copy of Tooth Fitness (877-363-1428). You may also want to schedule a consultation with Dr. McGuire to discuss your particular case (877-363-1428). If you do so, I suggest you read chapters one through five and eight before you speak with him to shorten your consultation time.

Q: I noticed in your modified citrus pectin booklet that MCP binds to calcium in the bloodstream. Wouldn't this affect your calcium supply needed for strong bones? I'm concerned about preventing osteoporosis. What can you tell me about this? — R.S., New Hyde Park, NY

A: That's a good question, and another sign of how savvy you and so many of my other subscribers are. I asked Dr. Isaac Eliaz about this since he's done more research on MCP in this country than anyone else.

MCP does have a weak ability to bind to calcium in the bloodstream, but he found there are no significant changes in calcium excretion in urine. How is this possible, you might ask? The kidneys are able to absorb calcium back from the bloodstream. So, once again, our body's wisdom allows us to keep the nutrients we need while allowing those we don't want, like heavy metals, to be excreted.