- Calcium supplements are insufficient when it comes to
triggering the growth of new bone in osteoporosis patients, according to
a leading researcher in the field of tissue development, healing and adaptation.
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- Kenneth McLeod, chair of the bioengineering department
at Binghamton University, said that neither calcium nor exercise can remedy
osteoporosis, which he says is not a disease. His research highlights the
limits of a dietary approach to the growing public health problem.
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- "Osteoporotics are, in most cases, perfectly healthy
people," said McLeod. "This is not a disease, but an adaptive
condition signalling some change in the internal environment. Bone is adaptive,
and the bones of osteoporotics are adapting to their environment."
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- It is time to give up fractured approaches to studying
osteoporosis and recognise that the loss of bone mass is a natural, arguably
"normal", adaptive response to systemic changes in the body,
he argues. Recognising this fact is key to enhancing our understanding
of what is really going on in the body, continued McLeod, and an approach
that targets the mechanism for bone loss probably offers the most realistic
hope of learning to avoid or reverse the devastating effects of osteoporosis.
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- A major public health threat affecting more than 44 million
Americans, osteoporosis affects women disproportionately. Eighty per cent
of those with the condition are women. And though osteoporosis is not age
dependent, 55 per cent of the US population 50 years of age and older have
low bone mass and face an increased risk of developing osteoporosis and
related fractures, according to the National Institutes of Health.
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- Characterised by low bone mass and structural deterioration
of bone tissue, osteoporosis leads to bone fragility and an increased susceptibility
to fractures of the hip, spine and wrist.
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- "Biologists might want to look for the gene for
osteoporosis and engineers tend to treat osteoporotic bones as if they
are parts of a failed mechanical system, but you are not going to understand
osteoporosis by either of these approaches as there is not necessarily
anything wrong with the bone," said McLeod. "What we need to
know is what has changed in the environment, what is the mechanism for
bone loss?"
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- Researchers already know that an individual with a dietary
calcium deficiency cannot make bone.
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- "But just because you take calcium doesn't mean
you're going to make bone," claims McLeod. "Calcium is necessary
but not sufficient. There has to be a signal to make bone, and it turns
out that if you don't have adequate fluid flow across your bone, you're
not going to have adequate cell metabolism to trigger bone formation."
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- The researcher suggested that the limitations of calcium
in addressing bone loss have been made most apparent by the space programme.
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- "Astronauts have a very serious problem with osteoporosis.
They go up in space and there is no signal to make bone, so they start
dumping bone. They have all sorts of calcium in their blood, so much so
that they are likely to form kidney stones, which are a major problem for
astronauts. So clearly you can overdose on calcium to the point where you
have kidney stones and still have osteoporosis," he explained.
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- McLeod's research has led him to suggest that the only
way to maintain bone mass is to maintain adequate fluid flow across bone
tissue, which requires adequate muscle activity, which affects lymphatic
flow and cardiovascular activity. But most forms of exercise have not been
able to reverse osteoporosis.
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- The researcher claims that training up one type of human
muscle fibre, Type II A fibres, could a key to reversing bone loss and
triggering bone growth. These fibres, also called fast oxidative fibres,
contain many mitochondria and are surrounded by many blood capillaries.
With the appropriate stimulus, Type II B fibres, also called fast twitch
or fast glycolytic fibres, can be trained into Type II A muscles, McLeod
said.
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- The bioengineer has developed a device, currently in
clinical testing, that sends low-level vibrations into the body to stimulate
II A muscle fibre development, enhance fluid flow through the bones, and
stimulate bone growth.
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- While both the nutrients in fruit and vegetables and
vitamin D have been shown to slow the onset of osteoporosis, there seems
to be as yet no way of reversing symptoms.
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