Osteoporosis is a Killer

Beautiful Bones without Hormones: The All-New Natural Diet and Exercise Program to Reduce the Risk of Osteoporosis and Keep Your Bones Healthy and Strong
by Leon Root, M.D.

Dr. Leon Root, world-renowned orthopedic surgeon and author of the million-copy bestseller Oh, My Aching Back, presents a 100% natural, HRT-free diet and exercise program for increasing bone density and reducing the risk of osteoporosis.

"Save your bones, save your life." That's Dr. Leon Root's motto after thirty-five years as an orthopedic surgeon. Today, forty-four million Americans suffer from osteoporosis or osteopenia. Having seen scores of people lose their independence and their lives to osteoporosis-related fractures, Dr. Root has become a crusader against this silent killer. Dr. Root's plan is the first and only one written since the Women's Health Initiative Study, which questioned the safety of HRT. His simple, all-natural approach consists of an easy-to-follow diet and exercise program that will safeguard anyone's bones against the incurable and wholly preventable - disease of osteoporosis. The book includes:

• A 14-Day High Calcium Diet (with foods you know), including variations for Children, Vegetarians and the Lactose Intolerant with an emphasis on forming healthy habits for a lifetime

• A breakdown of the amount of absorbable calcium in common foods

• More than sixty simple, calcium-rich recipes for delicious - not "diet" - meals, including calorie count and nutritional information

• A fully-illustrated, twenty-minute exercise routine that people of any fitness level can do at home

• Cutting edge information on recent breakthroughs in drug treatment for osteoporosis patients

• An extensive glossary, plus a list of organizations and websites devoted to beating osteoporosis

No other book on the market comes close to providing the comprehensive, up-to-the- minute information and advice Dr. Root gives in Beautiful Bones Without Hormones.

Osteoporosis is a killer. At the very least, it can be a crippler. When your bones become too weak or too brittle to handle the stresses of everyday life, they begin to break down internally and then to just plain break, often when you least expect it. There you are, walking down a sidewalk in February, you slip and fall on a patch of snow-covered ice, and wham, you've fractured your arm and you have to flag down a neighbor to help you back into the house. Or maybe you slip in the shower, twist around to keep from falling, and guess what? You have a broken hip even before you hit the tile. This is often how my patients discover they have osteoporosis. There's no warning, there are no symptoms, they are just going about their lives, doing the things they've done hundreds of times before, and suddenly the smallest fall or misstep occurs and they end up with a broken bone, a fractured hip, a collapsed spine.

Right now, forty-four million people in the U.S. have mild osteopenia, or thinning bones, and 10 million men and women have full-blown osteoporosis. While it is true that women are more susceptible to this condition than men, you might be surprised to learn that one out of every four American men over sixty-five will suffer a broken bone in his lifetime because of osteoporosis, and one third of all men over seventy-five currently have osteoporosis.

We have long known that in women, estrogen helps protect bones. Since osteoporosis is often associated with postmenopausal women, it seems reasonable to assume that the decreasing level of estrogen that accompanies menopause is a primary cause of the problem. Yes and no. Certainly, estrogen plays an important role in keeping our bones healthy, but estrogen is by no means the only route to strong, healthy bones. It is the alternatives to estrogen that I want to concentrate on in Beautiful Bones without Hormones.

Here's how it used to work: Often, when women began menopause (somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five) they would also begin a regimen of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). For a long time, HRT was the only U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - approved drug for the treatment of osteoporosis, and one of its clear benefits is bone health. Other treatments for keeping bones strong included calcium supplements, exercise, and a newer batch of drugs that the FDA later approved for stopping bone loss called bisphosphonates. (I'll discuss these in depth in Chapter 4.) Then, when a recent study by the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) was halted because of evidence that HRT can slightly increase a woman's risk of developing cancer, hundreds of thousands of women stopped taking HRT. It is these women, as well as every American man and woman - especially those over the age of fifty, 55% of whom already have osteopenia - that I want to address and help by writing this book. Incidentally, the FDA now refers to HRT as HT (the word replacement has been taken out) and to estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) simply as ET. Because most people are not aware of this change I will continue to refer to them as HRT and ERT.

The good news is that you can prevent osteoporosis, reverse bone loss, strengthen weak bones, and even build new bone naturally - without HRT. The solution lies in understanding how bones are formed and what you need to do to keep them healthy and strong. I'm reminded of the famous line from Julius Caesar, "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves." Osteoporosis is almost always fixable if we take the trouble to find out what causes it and what we can do to prevent it. Quite simply, preventing osteoporosis depends on what you eat and what you do. What you need to eat is a diet high in absorbable calcium, and I have developed a diet plan that is simple to follow, delicious and provides generous amounts of absorbable calcium every day. What you need to do is follow an easy, twenty-minute-a-day, weight-bearing and muscle-building exercise plan to keep both your bones and your body fit and flexible.

My interest in osteoporosis developed as a result of over thirty-five years as a practicing orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, a professor of clinical orthopedics at the Joan and Sanford Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and as the director of the Rehabilitation Department at the Hospital for Special Surgery. I have treated countless patients with collapsing spines, fractured wrists, and broken hips from osteoporosis. I'm sad to say that I've seen many people die from this crippling affliction, deaths that in most cases could have been prevented. I've also seen many treatments for osteoporosis over the years and learned that there is no single magic cure, but if you are willing to take your fate into your own hands by learning about osteoporosis and doing what you need to do to prevent it, you can keep your bones healthy and strong and often even reverse some of the crippling effects of osteoporosis.

In the following chapters I'll tell you everything I've learned about this "silent killer" in my practice. I'll explain just what the disease is and help you evaluate your own risk of developing it. I'll teach you how to separate fact from fiction when it comes to diagnosing and treating the disease, and I'll give you the complete lowdown on all the new and sometimes amazing drugs now on the market, some of which can actually reverse bone loss. I'll let you in on the dietary secrets that I believe can change your life, and I'll give you the simple exercise plan that I follow every day that has kept me standing straight and feeling great for many years.

Keep in mind that if you have or have had any special health problems, you must consult your doctor and seek his or her advice before starting any diet and exercise regimen. Everybody and every body is unique, so it is essential for you to work closely with a doctor who understands your particular medical history and individual needs. I believe that knowledge is power, and I want to share my knowledge with you so that you will have the power to keep your beautiful bones beautiful, to stand tall, to move with grace and ease, and to live a full, rich, and healthy life, a life that otherwise might be compromised by the development of bone-crushing osteoporosis.

— LEON ROOT, M.D.

Copyright © 2005 Dr. Leon Root

About the Author

Dr. Leon Root is an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, where he also serves as the Director of Rehabilitation Medicine and Director of the Back School Program. A Professor of Clinical Orthopedics at the Weill College of Medicine, Cornell University and a frequent guest on national media, he lives in New York City.