As a nutritionist in Australia I am often talking to people who wonder why they are ill all of the time and doctors do not seem to make a difference. This Blog is going to be about that and my first subject is Osteoporosis.

On the weekend I was talking to a lady who has osteoporosis and has been told by her doctor that it is incurable and that it will shorten her life?  At least that is how she interpreted the advice.  I do hope that the doctor did not actually say that.  One of my first actions was to advise her that this is not true.  In fact osteoporosis is not even a disease in the true sense odf the word, just a set of symptoms that we label osteoporosis.

If your doctor does even a mild amount of reading outside of the drug journals they would find that many people think that osteoporosis is, in most cases, treatable.  And most of the time totally avoidable.  Many times we are told that it has something to do with our lack of calcium or a vitamin intake.  This can be often true, however this is only a small part of the story. The thing that we are usually not told is that Calcium loss is most often the culprit.

What is calcium lass. It is the movement of calcium in your body and it is most often caused by having an acidic system caused by high intakes of grain, sugars, dairy and fatty meats.  There are people groups who have low intakes of calcium  but have no osteoporosis.  There diets are mainly made up of Green plants, vegetables and low fat meat.  They also have sufficient intakes of magnesium and vitamin A, which they get from their diets and being out in the sunlight.

(In fact recent research in China looked at several hundred vegan budhist nuns whose diet include less than 400Mg of Calcium per day.)  

(There was no cases of opteoporosis).

In fact many researchers would say that these big four and the replacement of the diet that our bodies evolved with are likely to be behind many of the symptom sets that we call disease and illness in the west. www.ThePaleoDiet.com is a good example of this research.

There are some simple rules for avoiding many of these issues.  Some simple ones are;

• eat mainly unrefined plant food.
• minimise cereal and grain intake.
• avoid or minimise dairy intake.
• avoid all sweeteners, artificial or natural.
• drink mainly water. Amount you need varies.
• avoid grainfed or processed meats.
• increase your magnesium intake.
• eat a vegetable rainbow everyday.

and the last is probably not dietary advice at all really, see or talk to a nutritionist or dietitian if you are having health issues. Few medical professionals do much, if any, study of human nutrition or nutritional bio-chemistry. So, absolutely see a medical professional for the management of acute symptoms but also talk to a nutrition professional for chronic issues like arthritis, osteoporosis or heart disease. Sometimes, for many, most often, the issue is really a poor diet or lifestyle that can be changed.