Osteoporosis causes both men and women to experience falls and break bones.
The resulting fractures can cause a person to be hospitalized, to get infections, and often to die.
So anything that lowers osteoporosis risk is good, right?
Some years ago big Pharma discovered the biphosphonates, including Fosamax.
Here’s how they work.
There are two kinds of cells that are used to build bone.
One type of cell absorbs bone — it destroys bone in order to rebuild it.
Its supposed to recycle bone that has reached the end of its life.
And then new bone can grow there instead.
The other kind of cell does the rebuilding.
So bones are constantly being broken down and rebuilt.
The bisphosphonates cause the process of recycling the bone to slow down or stop.
These bisphosphonates cause quite a major change in the bone structure in the body.
So it would be predictable that the bisphosphonates have negative side effects.
And indeed they do.
So I’m using this newsletter to show you how bogus studies quite often are.
And we’ll look at how to identify issues with studies.
After bisphosphonates were around for a while, there were a few disturbing discoveries.
They found out that these drugs cause people’s jaw to dissolve away.
And that they can cause certain kinds of cancers that were previously rare, such as a esophageal cancer.
The first study shows that in general, a popular bisphosphonate does NOT cause esophageal cancer.
And it stated, that people taking these drugs have a modest lowering of death rates.
This is called all-cause mortality:
There’s nothing really wrong with this study.
But it does contradict other studies.
Studies that have been shown to be quite good.
And the study that we’re talking about has extremely biased funding sources.
You’ll notice several Big Pharma drug companies on the list of funding sources.
This shows researchers with a clear conflict of interest, wouldn’t you agree?
MP: Consultancy, the Alliance for Better Bone Health and Warner Chilcott. BA: Grant/Research support from Novartis, Nycomed, Amgen, Merck Speakers Bureau with Nycomed, Merck, Eli Lilly. PE: Grant/Research support from Nycomed, Amgen, Novartis Speakers Bureau with Nycomed, Novartis, Eli Lilly and Amgen. RGGR: Research support from Sanofi-Aventis, and Warner Chilcott, Consultant/speaker and legal activities Amgen, GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Procter and Gamble, Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis, Eli Lilly, and Warner Chilcott. RE: Grant/Research support from Amgen, Novartis, Osteologix, Procter & Gamble, Medtronics, Nestech, Nestle, Fonterra brands, Pfizer, Unipath, Tethys, Inverness Medical, Servier, Ono Pharmaceutical, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca. Speakers Bureau with Eli Lilly, Takeda, Roche, Amgen, Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline.
So now let’s look at another study that showed completely different results.
It showed that bisphosphonates cause higher rates of cancer.
AND it showed they actually increase all-cause mortality.
This study was also very well done.
It showed that the rate of cancer of the esophagus went up after only a few prescriptions of bisphosphonates.
They went from one cancer in 1000 patients, to two cancers in 1000 patients.
You may not think that’s a large number, but it’s very worrying.
It didn’t take very long for the damage to be done.
And it’s reasonable to expect that in the longer term, the incidence of cancer would have gone to 3, 4 or even more cases per 1,000.
In another study done by dentists showed that the bones of mouth aren’t immune.
They found a significant increase in periodontitis and cavities in patients taking bisphosphonates.
Exactly what you would expect with a drug that’s interfering with the creation of new bone.
Periodontitis is very significant.
It’s an avenue for bacteria and bacterial endotoxins to enter the body.
Once in, they can infect the heart valve and contribute to atherosclerosis and heart problems.
As a dental study said of patients experiencing problems with bisphonates:
periodontitis 84%, dental caries 28.6%, abscessed teeth 13.4% root canal treatments 10.9%, and the presence of mandibular tori 9.2%.
The precipitating event that produced the bone exposures were spontaneous 25.2%, tooth removals 37.8%, advanced periodontitis 28.6%, periodontal surgery 11.2%, dental implants 3.4% and root canal surgery 0.8%.
The sad thing about the whole bisphosphonate scandal is that there are better options.
There are natural options that would work just as well or better.
For example, both vitamin D3 and vitamin K2 could probably be far more effective.
In this huge study, patients were even given vitamin K-2.
They were just given vitamin D and calcium.
And they had far better results than the bisphosphonate group in prior studies.
Their chances of getting a fracture were much lower than either the control groups or the bisphosphonate people.
But there’s no money for any drug company to recommend vitamins to doctors.
And doctors are basically sheep that are herded by the drug companies and big Pharma.
Citations
Esophageal and gastric cancer incidence and mortality in alendronate users
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jbmr.1481/full#bib7
ral bisphosphonates and risk of cancer of oesophagus, stomach, and colorectum: case-control analysis within a UK primary care cohort
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20813820
Oral Health Risk Factors for Bisphosphonate-Associated Jaw Osteonecrosis
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278239113002073
Bisphosphonate-Induced Exposed Bone (Osteonecrosis/Osteopetrosis) of the Jaws: Risk Factors, Recognition, Prevention, and Treatment
http://www.joms.org/article/S0278-2391(05)01187-0/fulltext?refuid=S1079-2104(06)00418-5&refissn=1079-2104
Calcium plus Vitamin D Supplementation and the Risk of Fractures
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa055218#t=articleResults
See this for more on Osteoporosis, and see more on Living Healthy, and for more information see effects of Vitamin D Supplements.