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Healthy Bones the Wise Woman Way
By Susun Weed
Every woman I know is concerned about osteoporosis. Frightening stories equate it
with broken hips, bent spines, wheelchairs, and death - things we all want to avoid.
What can we do? Should we take calcium supplements? Hormones? Fosamax? Can we rely
on our green allies?
The Wise Woman tradition maintains that simple lifestyle choices - including, but
not limited to, regular use of nourishing herbal infusions, medicinal herbal
vinegars, yogurt, and seaweed - are sufficient to preserve bone and prevent breaks.
And, further, that these lifestyle choices produce multiple health benefits,
including reduction of heart disease and breast cancer, without the problems and
risks associated with taking hormones. As for supplements, as we will see, they do
more harm than good.
Forget Osteoporosis
First, we must rid ourselves of the idea that osteoporosis is important. In the
Wise Woman Tradition, we focus on the patient, not the problem. There are no
diseases and no cures for diseases. When we focus on osteoporosis, we cannot see
the whole woman. The more we focus on disease - even disease prevention - the less
likely we are to know how to nourish health/wholeness/holiness.
In fact, focusing our attention narrowly on the prevention of osteoporosis actually
increases the incidence of breast cancer. The postmenopausal women with the highest
bone mass are the most likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Women who take
estrogen replacement to prevent osteoporosis, even for as little as five years,
increase their risk of breast cancer by twenty percent; if they take hormone
replacement, the risk increases by forty percent.
These risks might be vindicated if we could show a correlation between bone density
and bone breakage, but there isn't one. When I found myself at dinner in 2000 with
Susan Brown, director of the Osteoporosis Information Clearing House, I asked her
to point me in the direction of any study that shows a clear relationship between
osteoporosis and broken bones. She smiled. "There are none."
"In a recent study," she continued. "Researchers measured the bone density of people
over 65 who had broken bones. Twenty-five percent had osteoporosis. Twenty-five
percent had high bone density. And fifty percent had normal density." Notice that
those with high bone density broke their hips as frequently as those with osteoporosis.
Get Flexible
If osteoporosis isn't the problem, what is? In a word: inflexibility. Flexible bones
bend; stiff bones break. This holds true even if the flexible bone is thin, even if the
stiff bone is thick. Think of a piece of dead pine wood. Though it may be thick, it is
brittle and breaks easily. Think of a green pine twig. Even a small one is nearly
impossible to break. Flexible bones, whether thick or thin, bend rather than break.
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