I was out to dinner with a wonderful couple. He was a dentist who used holistic methods and nutrition in his practice. She worked with him and knew almost as much as he did. We were having a casual conversation, and she said, dejectedly, that she was going to have to start taking osteoporosis medication. She didn’t want to but felt like she had no choice.
I was stunned. The drugs thicken bone, but don’t seem to make them much stronger. They wreak havoc on the digestive system. There are reports of femoral fractures and osteonecrosis of the jaw (the jawbone literally rots). I asked if she was taking vitamin K and vitamin D. She said yes. I asked if she took HCl with meals (not a standard approach to osteoporosis, but I have found that improving digestion helps a lot of these patients). She said yes—I was surprised because not many people know about that. I mentioned boron—she was taking it along with a multiple designed for bone health. I shrugged; I had nothing more to offer.
The Missing Piece of the Puzzle
Later, at a different meal (we were at a conference together), she mentioned that she had a blood test saying she had taken a tissue transglutaminase IgA (tTG-IgA) – the primary screening test for celiac disease and she tested positive. She didn’t want to go through the biopsy and other tests. I asked if she avoided gluten. She said, “Most of the time.” We were at an Indian restaurant, and she was eating the bread and some sort of gluten containing dumpling.
I bring this up because she was taking all the right supplements. She ate vegetables, avoided processed food and ate a diet that was very healthy by most people’s standards. Sure, the flour in the bread and dumpling was refined—but this was not her habit. This was a special occasion. But she was eating gluten, and celiac disease can be linked to osteoporosis.
The point is that you do not treat osteoporosis—you treat the patient. This woman was taking the right supplements and eating a healthy diet, yet one overlooked factor may have been undoing much of her progress. Celiac disease is only one example. Hidden infections, digestive problems, food sensitivities, hormone imbalances, chronic inflammation, and many other factors can interfere with healing. Sometimes the missing piece of the puzzle is not obvious, but finding it can make all the difference.
