Osteoporosis is caused by a demineralization of the bones. But that's just the surface of the story.
A person who develops osteoporosis has been losing calcium from their system for decades. In technical terms, they've been in negative calcium balance for a long time.
That seems simple enough: You just add some calcium supplements to the diet and the problem is solved. Either that or, as the advertisements say, you make sure you get enough dairy products. End of story.
Well, not really. As it turns out, the real story is exactly the opposite of what it appears to be.
A number of experiments have been done where women were supplemented with extra calcium, up to 2,000mg a day—a huge amount. And yet they remained in negative calcium balance. In fact, the researchers found that the only way they could get their subjects into positive calcium balance was to lower the protein in their diet.
To understand why, we have to look at the digestion of protein. Unlike the digestion of carbohydrates, which is a relatively "clean" process, the metabolizing of protein is an inherently "messy" process which generates a number of toxic by-products.
These by-products of protein digestion tend to be acidic, and they circulate in the bloomstream before the body can excrete them. The problem is that the body must keep the bloodstream slightly alkaline at all times or we die. Thus those acidic by-products in the bloodstream must be neutralized at all costs.
In order to keep the blood alkaline, then, the body pulls minute amounts of calcium from the bones. The amounts involved are very small, but continued over decades this process gradually de-mineralizes the bones.
Thus the real problem is not too little calcium but too much protein. This being so, the fundamental solution to osteoporosis is to lower the amount of protein in the diet.
Consider African Bantu women: They get on average only 400mg of calcium per day (far less than the 900mg that most American women get). Yet, though they birth and nurse an average of nine children, osteoporosis is virtually unknown. They don't develop osteoporosis because they eat a low-protein diet.
Ironically, one of the main contributors to excess protein in the diet is milk and dairy products. It's a fact that those countries that consume the most dairy products have the highest levels of osteoporosis. On the other hand, those countries with the lowest levels of dairy consumption also have the lowest levels of osteoporosis.
So where do we get our calcium then? The best source happens to be green leafy plants. Ounce for ounce they're a far better source of calcium than dairy products, and they don't contribute to osteoporosis. Remember Popeye and his spinach? Maybe Popeye was on to something.
—jim sloman, fall 2000 for Nov 6
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