The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones (excerpt – pp 10-12)

There are trauma fractures, and then there are low-trauma or fragility fractures. This book addresses the latter. I am certain that what we eat can help keep us strong, prevent us from becoming weak and fragile, and thus prevent fragility fractures. But before I go into those details, I’ll establish the basic theoretical framework from which I start. In order to make good decisions and choices, we need more than rules; we need a basic philosophy that directs us and is cohesive enough that our choices have the desired results. Otherwise we are at the mercy of other people telling us what to do based on their philosophy. Once you know where I stand, you can better make your own decisions, whether you agree or disagree with me. Follow me, then, as we take a short detour into a philosophy of life.

The Complexity of Living Systems

Energy moves between opposite poles, and every action has its consequences. Newton integrated these concepts into the pillars of his physical laws, and many systems of thought throughout history concur. Action and reaction, up and down, night and day—these are all sets of opposites, like the two sides of a coin, and just as inseparable. You could visualize that life works like a seesaw or a pendulum. Right and wrong and yin and yang are two of the better known social constructs on this theme. For the past five thousand years, right and wrong has been the basic mode of thought in Western civilization, while yin and yang has been the foundation of Chinese thought.

The main difference between those two viewpoints has to do with judgment. Right versus wrong implies that if one part is good or right, the other automatically has to be bad or wrong, and often that is taken to mean that whatever is “opposite” must be eliminated. Yin and yang, on the other hand, are nonjudgmental descriptions. No superiority of one over the other is implied, and no destruction of one or the other is required. In fact, the two are seen as complementary and integrally interwoven. In the Chinese system, it is assumed that when one of the opposites shows up, the other isn’t far behind.

When we deal with right and wrong, or good and bad, and try to eliminate whatever is considered wrong or bad, it’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Trying to eliminate one part of the set of opposites will negatively affect the other part. This is a universal law and cannot be escaped. Here’s an example: In the early 1900s, it was decided that mosquitoes were bad because they carry malaria. It was decided that mosquitoes should be eradicated, and DDT was used liberally to that end. This was action. What was the reaction? Not only did the mosquitoes die, but many birds died as well, poisoned by the pesticide. In fact, the whole earth was poisoned, and most of those toxins remain with us to this day.

Our bodies are extremely complex. John Apsley, DC, in his chapter on biogenic medicine in The Advanced Guide to Longevity Medicine (2001), points out that every cell in the body registers more than a million disturbances or alterations daily, all of which need to be corrected just to maintain the integrity of the system against these stresses. Multiplying that by 75 trillion (the number of cells in the body), that means that every second of every day the body is performing close to 870 trillion corrections! He further states that the ability to manage such a task points to a regenerative technology that can operate at near quantum speeds, that is, unlimited by time and space.

Clearly it isn’t possible to manage such a complex system with linear or reductionistic thinking: one cause, one effect; or one problem, one drug. Many variables need to be addressed and accommodated. This is where a holistic approach comes in, endeavoring to look at the entire picture and attend to consequences way down the line. What does this have to do with bones? It underscores the danger inherent in going single-mindedly after a focused goal; for example, bones contain calcium, so let’s take more calcium to make the bones stronger. With this approach, we may find ourselves stumbling over the law of unintended consequences because we fail to take into account the other aspects of this complex issue. We’ll take a close look at this particular topic in chapter 3.

One aspect of the holistic approach is trust in the life process—trust that the body has its reasons that reason does not understand. The body’s job is to stay alive day in and day out, knowing what to do with air, food, and water and how to go about repairing itself. Our bodies are born with this knowledge. It is part and parcel of each of us. When things go wrong, I believe it is important to work with the body’s knowledge, to listen carefully to what it tells us and provide what’s missing or remove what’s in excess. This is what the natural healing model proposes to do: bring the body back into balance by paying attention to the law of opposites and thereby avoid triggering unexpected consequences.

Most natural healing therapies, such as acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathy, dietary therapies, and energy medicines, look at the body as a whole system. In contrast, the conventional medical model tends to work in a simple linear fashion (if you have a headache, take a pill to eliminate the pain) rather than looking at what caused the headache to arise in the first place. That’s why so many medicines actually work against the body, as witnessed by the list of “anti medications”: antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, ant(i)acids, and the like. The all-too-common adverse effects of these drugs are often unexpected reactions of the highly complex body to the overly simplistic standard approach.

In my personal experience, the natural healing model is more accurate and has better results in dealing with disorders of function—things that the body isn’t doing “right.” Western medicine does a great job of dealing with structural problems and mechanical issues; in fact, nothing comes close to its ability to save lives in emergencies like car crashes, burns, gunshot wounds, and, of course, broken bones. Pharmacological drugs, on the other hand, are more problematic. All man-made drugs or supplements have unbalancing or adverse effects. They are a double-edged sword with both desired effects and adverse effects. Both are equal. Both count. We cannot have one without the other. When we rely on drugs for our health needs, the adverse effects must be taken into account, and expected, at all times.

No matter what your philosophy is, holistic or conventional, you’ll be right in some cases and wrong in others. C. Sidney Burwell, former dean of the Harvard Medical School, has been quoted as saying, “My students are dismayed when I say to them, ‘Half of what you are taught as medical students will in ten years have been shown to be wrong, and the trouble is, none of your teachers knows which half’” (Pickering 1956, 113).

For bone health in particular, numerous medications, supplements, and drugs are regularly recommended for making bones more dense, and for the fracture prevention benefits that denser bones are expected to provide. Using drugs to prevent something that may or may not happen (at least 50 or 60 percent of postmenopausal women don’t get osteoporotic fractures) could cause adverse effects that may be worse than the problem presumably avoided. The axiom that the benefits of pharmaceutical drugs outweigh the risks mainly holds true in life-threatening situations. If the choice is between suffocating from an asthma attack and losing a little bone mass from the steroids, the choice is fairly clear. But it’s an entirely different situation if the choice is between shrinking a little less and an increased risk of breast cancer associated with hormone replacement therapy. My preference is to use the natural healing model first and as much as possible, including lifestyle modifications, appropriate foods, and complementary therapies such as acupuncture, chiropractic, and massage, and only consider conventional medicine as a last resort, or in certain situations when it would be most useful.

©2009 by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

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Paperback: 257 pages
Publisher: New Harbinger - February 2009
ISBN-10: 1572245808
ISBN-13: 978-1572245808