Kick it naturally – Understanding Osteoporosis

You can listen to this episode HERE.

Disclaimer

T.C. Hale is not a doctor and does not claim to be a doctor, licensed in any type of medical field. Don’t be an idiot and use anything heard on this show as medical advice. This information should be used for educational purposes only and you should contact your doctor for any medical advice. Now get off me.

Kinna: Welcome to kick it naturally I’m Kinna McInroe and I’m here with T.C. Hale, author, natural health expert, producer and uh, pain in my butt sometimes.

Tony: It’s Kinna McInroe she’s here with T.C. Hale, oh, you already did all that.

Kinna: Yeah, yeah.

Tony: Hello.

Kinna: Hello.

Tony: I, uh, I have some ninja socks.

Kinna: Oh good.

Tony: I’m not wearing them, I just felt I should be honest I own socks, that have little pictures of ninjas on them.

Will: Oh, I thought you meant socks that ninjas would wear.

Tony: No, no, not anything cool like that. Just like, hey, these socks have pictures of ninjas on them for no reason.

Will: A ninja would not wear those.

Kinna: Oh, oh, that’s good.

Tony: But, I own them, and I felt like I needed to be honest about them.

Will: Cause they are secret about their identity.

Tony: I felt like, like I needed to be honest about that.

Kinna: Does that have to do with any kind of imbalance or something or?

Tony: No.

Kinna: Oh, ok. Great.

Tony: Not, that I know of, I’m just trying to be more open.

Kinna: Oh, ok, good. Well, alright, well, I didn’t get the memo today, cause Will and Tony are in black and red, and nobody told me to color coordinate, so I feel a little left out.

Will: Oh, it’s ok.

Tony: We will include you in the handshake later, we have a cool handshake, that we made up.

Kinna: Alright, cool. And Will Schmidt, is here today, on the mic, yo, yo.

Will: Thank you for that.

Kinna: That was me.

Will: Gassy? Get her some beet flow.

Kinna: Doing some beat box, oh, yes, I was being gassy. A little gas jokes for you. So, if you have not liked us on Facebook, and you, I mean, what are you waiting for? The time is now people! Stop what you are doing. Drop that cupcake. Stop making that martini. Go ahead, and like us on Facebook, and we’re gonna post questions there every single week and you will be able to ask us some questions, wait, were not posting questions.

Tony: We post topics on Sunday.

Kinna: We post topics.

Tony: Sunday night, we usually put it up there.

Kinna: Yeah, Sundays, we’ll post topics, and then you can post questions, and we will answer them here. The only thing is it’s a little delayed. So, if you’re like, where’s my question, how come nobody has said my question, it’s because we’re a few shows behind, so, just keep listening.

Tony: We’re actually ahead, cause we’re efficient.

Kinna: Yeah, we’re ahead, but your behind. Yeah, there you go.

Tony: So, does that make them un-efficient? I don’t think that is a word.

Kinna: I don’t know. I don’t know.

Tony: Inefficient, is how you normally say words like that. But, uh, you know, Kinna had a good idea that we should also do like a potluck show.

Kinna: Yeah, everybody bring their own problems.

Tony: Yeah, let people ask any kind of question.

Will: Yeah, you know, I just had a really great session, with a guy that has a podcast that’s all about that. They shoot in questions, and then they answer ‘em, daily.

Kinna: Oh, so, were not the first?

Will: No. I’m just saying.

Tony: Are you just saying, we’re not the Columbus of podcast?

Kinna: Oh, darn.

Will: It’s ok.

Kinna: I got a, everybody can bring their own problems, like I got a cracked foot. What do you got? I got a blood shot eye. I got a leaky butt.

Will: Yeah, that could be a cool show. Random.

Kinna: If you like audio books, you’re going to love our sponsor, Audible.com is giving all of our listeners a free audio book of your choice, and a free 30 day membership. Go to kick it in the nuts.com/audiobooks, and click on the link, so you guys can get yours.

Tony: The free book that Kinna got, was how to sound like an announcer.

Kinna: That’s right. Is it working?

Tony: It totally is.

Kinna: Alright, cool. But today, is not random, today we are talking about Osteoporosis. And, I want to hear what you guys have to say, cause I don’t want to 20 years from now, walk, and step off a curb, and pow, I broke my hip. That doesn’t sound fun.

Tony: Right, cause uh, that really happens. I read somewhere that something that said Osteoporosis is so prevalent now, that there is a fracture, caused by Osteoporosis in the world, like every 3 seconds. Like pow!

Kinna: Wow.

Tony: Yeah, pow! That’s like a lot. And then it’s like, it’s costing us, medical costs, as much as some of the problems, we think are the big spenders.

Kinna: Yeah, and then old people can’t get busy anymore, you know they say you lose your sex drive at a certain age, it’s probably because you have a broken hip. It’s no fun. The only time I like brittle is like peanut brittle.

Tony: Peanut brittle? I’m not a big fan of peanut brittle.

Kinna: Probably cause it tastes good, and has sugar in it?

Tony: Yeah, that’s probably why. Um, but, I think we have a lot to talk about in this show. And, um, cause I want to go through a lot of the common beliefs, the common views, about Osteoporosis. And just understand especially if you are dealing with Osteoporosis, that we’re not saying that this is the answer, and no way are we saying, that other views are wrong or stupid. We’re just saying that it is our opinion that they are wrong and stupid. Um, no, they aren’t always like that. Did you? Are you ok with that?

Kinna: No, no, I just like to act like I’m going to say something, so then you stop talking.

Tony: It’s a good way to get me to not say things, but, so, what we are going to do today? We’re just going to give you a different view, that maybe you have uh, not found. And the part that will throw you off is that a lot of it will kind of make sense, and you’ll be like oh, that kind of makes sense. Now maybe I need to investigate some things for myself. Um, because a big thing, that we need to cover for sure today is vitamin D. We do have a whole other podcast that’s about understanding the truth about vitamin D. Cause there is a lot of bad information out there. But when you talk about Osteoporosis, the first thing that usually comes out of somebody’s mouth is cram vitamin D and calcium down your gullet or your going to snap in half.

Kinna: Well?

Tony: That’s the show. Bye bye.

Kinna: Yeah, bye. Gotta go.

Tony: Sorry we didn’t get to the questions.

Will: And, yeah, I mean and I think just to get ahead of that a little bit, if you haven’t already listened to the vitamin D podcast, because it pulls calcium out of the bones, is one of the biggest things as to why that would contribute to weak bones, but other things would do that too, so we’re not only going to focus on vitamin D, were going to look at what other causes and factors can make your bones less mineral dense, and again, Kinna, your going to love this, it goes really strongly mostly rooted in digestion.

Tony: It is. And, and.

Kinna: And it’s sugars too.

Tony: And your other friend is going to come to. But, uh, the big thing about vitamin D, and we won’t go into all of it, cause we talked about it for an hour in the vitamin D podcast, but the thing about vitamin D is, it helps us pull vitamin D from the food in the intestinal track into the blood stream, so it can be used by the body. That is what vitamin D does, so, it’s a big hero, we need it. If we don’t have any, then we can’t pull the calcium out of the food, into the blood where it can be used in the body, to help build bones and all of these things. So, it’s got to be there. The problem is that with high amounts of vitamin D like we are being told to take, which are like 2000 to 4000 iu’s a day, and some people are saying to even take more than that. That little dust buster, that was sucking calcium out of the intestinal track turns into this huge shop vac, and it not only pulls calcium out of the intestinal tract, but it sucks it into the blood stream from everywhere else. The places where it’s supposed to be, like in the tissues, and even in the bones, so it can kind of make the blood calcium retentive and it can do that a little too powerfully. And that’s a real problem.

Kinna: Is that why swiss cheese looks like it does?

Tony: It’s exactly.

Kinna: Cause it’s pulling the calcium out of the cheese?

Tony: It’s why Fruit Loops have a hole in the middle too. Cause they have a vitamin D issue.

Kinna: Deficiency. Ok.

Tony: I like it when you can associate things in real life. But no, that’s not the real reason.

Kinna: Aww.

Tony: That’ o.k. Kinna, that was good. And we got to mention Fruit Loops.

Tony & Kinna:And Fruit Loops is our sponsor for today.

Tony: They’re great! That’s a whole different….

Kinna: I would only be happy if that was our sponsor because that would mean I’d probably be getting some free Fruit Loops. Uh huh uh huh!

Tony: Fruit Loop it up! Wup wup! But so…you know we’ve talked a lot in our vitamin D podcast and the common cold podcast about these problems of taking too much vitamin D. So, Will, do you wanna talk about maybe some ways some people can know that if they’re taking more vitamin D than they should? Because if you do you can basically not only create the recipe for Osteoporosis, but you can also turn off your immune system and all kinds of other problems.

Will: Yeah, yeah. The easiest way for people to check that themselves is to look at their urine pHs.

Tony: Sure.

Will: Because you’re pulling calcium out of your bones, like that as well as some other alkaline electrolytes that you might be peeing out for different reasons, your urine pH can be really high. So if you get pH test paper from like Whole Foods or wherever and you pee on a strip and your pH is over like 6.5, for sure that’s an issue and you should not be taking vitamin D. Cause that’s gonna make your urine even more alkaline. Which if you’re, I guess a guy or girl, but mostly if you’re a girl it makes you more susceptible to UTI’s. Makes your insulin levels too strong, which can contribute to insomnia. But it’s also a clear sign that vitamin D is pushing you in the wrong direction at that moment.

Tony: Right. And another good sign is if you’re getting cold sores or you get a cold. Like you if talk to somebody on the phone that has a cold and you get sick.

Will: Right.

Tony: That’s a good indication that your immune system isn’t working that well. Um, if you get charley horses. Um, these are all signs that vitamin D may not be appropriate for you at least at the level that you’re taking it. Because the high levels of vitamin D appear to be pulling too much calcium out of the tissue level where it needs to be for all those things to function.

Will: And just for some people who are probably really concerned about this because they went into their doctor’s office and their blood tests showed that they were super low in vitamin D, I’ve had that happen with a lot of my friends, and they’re scared not to take vitamin D cause their doctor tell you it’s critical. You’re super deplete of it. And we’re not here to tell you should or shouldn’t listen to your doctor give advice around that, but we want to help you understand why your body might be making less vitamin D on purpose. If you don’t have a ton of calcium in your tissue levels to go around to contribute to your metabolism and your tissues and be in your blood, then your body will on purpose synthesize less vitamin D from the sun to help the calcium stay at the tissue level. So if you just hijack that whole innate intelligence and supplement with vitamin D, your body can’t block that vitamin D. It’s going to just do it’s vacuum thing and pull calcium from the tissues.

Tony: Right.

Will: And it’s tricky because then the doctor will be like, oh cool, your vitamin D levels are good now that you’re taking 8000 iu’s of it a day.

Tony: Right. Right.

Will: And you might even feel better cause your blood pressure might come up and if you’re a low blood pressure person or electrolyte deficient, that can make you feel nicer, but it’s coming at this cost of depleting your tissues and your bones of calcium.

Tony: Right, and tissue calcium is a super big deal because it’s what triggers your immune system to attack. It’s like hey, there’s an invader go ahead and take care of that. And if there’s not enough calcium at the tissue level, there is no signal to attack. And that’s why a person will often get cold sores. And we have a whole polecast, podcast.

Kinna: Podcast…easy for you to say.

Tony: It wasn’t easy. You can tell by the way I jacked it all up.

Kinna: Uh huh.

Tony: But if a person’s getting cold sores that’s a strong sign that there isn’t enough calcium at the tissue level to signal the body to attack that virus so it can have a break out. Um, and then if you help that person push calcium back tot the tissue where it’s supposed to be all of the sudden those break outs don’t happen anymore.

Will: And the same thing you mentioned with Charley horses and muscle function like your muscle cells can’t work right either without calcium, so they’ll just start twitching and cramping and clinching and not being able to make ATP.

Tony: So when you look at the doctors telling us you know gosh, you gotta have all this vitamin D. Where this comes from is they look at these clinical trials and they look at all these people that have like heart disease or Osteoporosis or all these thing and they look at the vitamin D level in the blood and it’s low, but we need to think about why would vitamin D be low? So let’s talk about Kinna’s favorite topic.

Kinna: Let me guess.

Tony: Not porn.

Kinna: Oh…

Tony: Sugar.

Kinna: Oh, yeah. Sugar’s above porn. That’s for sure.

Tony: It’s ranked higher. So what happens is when we eat sugar, the calcium is like, Ooo sugar, that’s fun! And calcium will follow sugar.

Kinna: I will too. To the ends of the earth.

Tony: Just like we’d follow an ice cream truck.

Kinna: I wrote a love song to sugar this weekend.

Tony: Um, so, the more sugar, or more carbohydrates that our bodies turn into sugar, that we are consuming, the more calcium that will leave our tissues, and follow that sugar in the blood stream, and then what happens is the sugar will get burned, stored, whatever, and then the calcium will get dropped, and it’s not like after it goes for it’s run, following the sugar, that it just goes back to the tissue. It gets dropped and it gets deposited into joints, or the kidneys are like there’s too much calcium in the blood stream, I’ve got to filter some of this out, so it pees out. And, that’s when you see that high urine pH that Will was talking about. You also see people like end up with a lot of kidney stones, because the kidneys are having to filter out, all that calcium, at any point, at any, any, any, whatever the situation is what I’m saying, if your having high blood sugar, frequently, and all that calcium is leaving the tissues, doesn’t it make sense that the body would say, hey, why don’t I restrict Vitamin D formation, so that I am not pulling more calcium out of the tissues, cause I’m already low where it needs to be. So, that’s kind of what the body does, is it’ll restrict vitamin D production, so, that it can just attempt to get calcium back to the right place. And, that is why we see low vitamin D in like diabetics, and people with high blood sugar. You ok with that?

Kinna: Yeah, I’m ok. I was creating a musical in my mind, called “Sugar: The Musical”

Tony: Oh, it’s good.

Kinna: I was on my second dance number.

Tony: So, but, that makes sense as to why I can go to my doctor and I can take a blood test that shows that I am low on vitamin D, but that’s not necessarily an indication that you need vitamin D, it could be an indication that you might need to lower your blood sugar or work with some other problems that are causing calcium to leave the tissue.

Will: Yeah, like if you are overall mineral deplete, you don’t have a ton of calcium to go around. That’s another reason why your body would try to make some vitamin D. Like if you are electrolyte deficient. Which I’ve seen a lot of times where the person doesn’t have enough, not only calcium to trigger their immune system, but also chloride to make stomach acid and all sorts of other issues like that effect their thyroid and their endocrine system.

Tony: Right, so, that is important to look at when you are looking to fight off Osteoporosis. Especially if you’re a person that maybe you had a bone scan, and you are fine, but you’re so freaked out about the fact that there’s a bone break every 3 seconds and I just scared you even more telling you that fact, that now you’re listening to what everybody is saying, like, oh, I should have 17 vitamin D capsules every day. I need to take my calcium. It’s not always about that you don’t have enough calcium. It’s just that it could be in the wrong place for a lot of different reasons. And we have a free 4 week digestion course that we teach on kickitinthenuts.com. And it teaches you how to look at your own physiology, so that you can get an idea of what’s going on with you instead of just following what all the cool kids are doing. Cause that’s not always the right step for you and your chemistry. So when we look at that analogy you can see that yes, taking some vitamin D can help you from having Osteoporosis because it helps pull calcium in, but you can also see where taking too much vitamin D could create Osteoporosis. Cause as you pull all that calcium out of the tissues, it’s not available there, it’s not available to help build the bones. It’s all floating around in the bloodstream. So, the higher levels can actually be a recipe for Osteoporosis. So don’t view it as your savior and going to fix everything.

Kinna: I just had an idea for another book series for you.

Tony: Oh yeah?

Kinna: When you said recipe for Osteoporosis, you could write books that are the recipes for what you do to get those diseases.

Tony: How to get.

Kinna: How to get those diseases.

Tony: That’s good.

Kinna: And then you know of course the opposite would be to not get it.

Tony: To not do anything I say. That’s how we should do it. People just don’t do anything…

Kinna: Yeah, cause people don’t like to be told what to do. So if they think it’s their idea. It’s like….

Will: Hey, I’m not gonna get Diabetes.

Kinna: Yeah, exactly.

Tony: So this show we’ll do half and half and it’s just up to you to figure out which side of the game that we’re on.

Kinna: Exactly.

Tony: Um, ok, before we get to questions we have a couple of other things we have to hit on.

Kinna: Besides me?

Tony: Yeah, we’re always hitting on Kinna.

Kinna: Be careful a bone might break.

Tony: Yeah, we don’t wanna snap you in half. So let’s look at digestion and the body bringing in nutrients and what that means for bones, Will.

Will: Alright.

Kinna: You’re on.

Will: So real quick synopsis of digestion and the whole magic explosion that we need to have happen to get the nutrients from our food.

Kinna: That sizzle.

Will: Right, that sizzle. So stomach acid acidifies the food and then the food leaves the stomach and goes into the start of the intestinal tract call the duodenal and that’s where bile should squirt onto it and bile is really alkaline. Kinna…So there should be this acid base collision like a high school volcano explosion and that’s where most of the nutrients are liberated from the food and then can be absorbed into the body. There’s more to digestion obviously than that, but when we look at like the minerals and such that we need to extract from our food a lot of that depends on that little explosion happening correctly. So without stomach acid and bile flow you don’t get that sizzle or explosion and you miss out on a lot of the nutrition in your food.

Tony: Right. And what do we do with nutrition that we pull out of food? We use that to make us.

Will: Cells and things.

Tony: Yeah, to make tissue. And that’s the building block of what the body uses to build bones. And that’s widely accepted and everybody agrees, that the body needs, they talk about calcium a lot, and they talk about amino acids, and proteins, and building blocks, and all kinds of stuff, so, everybody can agree that we need those things. Of course not everybody understands that you need to have digestion functioning correctly to pull that out of your food, and that’s a super big deal.

Kinna: Say, you do have bone loss, say a lot of bone loss, is there anyway to get that back? I mean if you fix your digestion, if all of that is working, can you build it back?

Tony: I say yes. And I say that because

Kinna: He’s crossing his fingers though.

Tony: No, I say that because the body does that, you know, everything in the body can be broken down, and kind of rebuilds.

Kinna: Yeah, like your lungs can be back in 7 years, and different things like that, it rebuilds itself, it regenerates.

Tony: Some cells are regenerated every minute, and some are a month, week, but the whole body, the whole thing is constantly being broken down, and rebuilt. And that is the interesting thing about some of these Osteoporosis drugs that are showing that when you use them, even though you take it, you have these horrible gastro pains, and you are doubled over in the fetal position, if you just keep doing that for 4, or 5 years, you will have increased bone density, but they are showing that, it actually just keeps the body from breaking down bone cells, and all that old cell just stays in there, so that the bone becomes more dense, but it’s not actually rejuvenating new cells, and its not actually living bone. I don’t understand it a lot, it’s kind of freaky what they are saying, but it’s enough to freak me out a little bit. Um, but as a human, I vote, that yes, you can rebuild bone. Just in the same way that if you snap your arm and the doctor resets it.

Kinna: It grows back.

Tony: In a month or so later, it’s not that broken, well, how’d that happen?

Will: Your doctor may say that it’s degenerative, and there is no cure for it, but because that is what usually happens cause people don’t usually fix the cause of it.

Tony: Right, right.

Kinna: They just get on the meds and it just doesn’t.

Will: Yeah, which makes things worse. It poisons the liver, and so they usually see this like steady decline when they get it.

Kinna: And you die from it years later.

Will: Yeah. Right, it’s sad and unnecessary.

Tony: That’s not nice.

Will: So, like if you fix the cause of the problem, you can definitely regenerate your bone tissue, your bone density. You can look at that, we should talk a little bit about compression, and the whole stimulus.

Tony: Yeah, let’s talk about some work out stuff, for sure.

Will: But when you look at like, just this quick instance of like can bone grow back, look at astronauts when they go and do extended space missions, when they are up in space for like 3 months, these are like the fittest, smartest people on the planet, that we send up there.

Tony: They are literally rocket scientist.

Will: They are literally rocket scientist and like Olympians, it’s insane.

Kinna: Their bodies atrophy when they are up there.

Will: Even though they are on like 8 hours a day of exercise while they are up there, they don’t have gravity pushing on there bones 24 hours a day, like you do on earth. Their bone density decreases to that of like a 75 year old, in like a few..

Kinna: They must just listen to John Mayer up there. Gravity.

Will: Right. Just rock out.

Tony: That should fix it.

Will: Right, but, um, that is just in a 3 month span of time, they lose like all of this from being tip top world class athlete to that. And, then it comes back, like once they get back and the gravity is pressing on it. Because it stimulates the, I forget is it the Osteocytes that build bones or Osteoblasts?

Tony: Or clasts? I don’t know.

Will: I forget. Anyways there’s these cells that like respond, I forget the names of which one of them, but with compression, it stimulates the bones to grow and to become more dense. Just like a muscle is stimulated when you do a workout.

Kinna: Those bones aren’t that stupid. They’re not dense. Ahhhh! Oh Gosh.

Tony: Whoop. Whoop!

Will: Okay. That happens there’s an electrical signal that happens through compression like when you jog or lift weights and if you don’t stimulate those bones with that electric charge via compression. They will start to get the sense I don’t need to be that dense. I don’t need to be that strong anymore. Kind of like an arm that you just never use. Like the muscles will just kind of atrophy. Cause the body’s very economic with its resources. It’s not gonna like maintain a lot of like big muscles or bone density.

Tony: Especially if the resources coming in are limited.

Will: Yeah, so it’s like, I don’t need that anymore, so it’ll just kind of chip away at it. But that’s another really important reason why you do wanna stay physically active and keep stimulating your body to have strong bones.

Tony: And when you see the information out there and you hear people talking about you know how resistance exercise can benefit you greatly if you have Osteoporosis, that’s real stuff. I buy into that 100%. The problem is that if you’re going to do that you also need to put your body into a position where it can get the resources to rebuild. Cause the exercise will stimulate your body to rebuild, but if it doesn’t have any building blocks to build with then it’s just gonna kind of look at you and be like can’t we just have a nap?

Will: Yeah.

Kinna: And so it’ll start tearing everything down and sucking it out anyways cause it doesn’t have resources or what?

Tony: And that’s good. Let’s talk about that a little bit, Kinna. Cause that’s one view. You know a lot of people will view things like Rheumatoid Arthritis as an auto immune where the body is attacking itself, and let’s just say that, and then that leads people to a lot Rheumatoid Arthritis people also have Osteoporosis, so the body must be attacking its bones. And let’s just say for a minute that we went along with the theory that all the sudden my body hates bones. And its just gonna attack bone. And its gonna do that evenly throughout my body not in one location.

Will: You’re just gonna be a jelly fish.

Tony: Its just gonna be so pissed off at bone that it just attacks it. So let’s say that just for a minute we go along with that. Nevermind, I can’t even go along with that for a minute. But the way that we view it is that, we talk in a lot of shows about some imbalances, the anabolic and catabolic imbalance. And these are states at the cellular level that the body is in supposed to be in everyday. During the day we should be catabolic. Where the cells are more open. We kind of break down tissue and energy is easier to make. And then at night, we’re more anabolic where we rebuild. But maybe, Will, talk a little bit about what happens with what we see with Rheumatoid Arthritis. Which could very easily be a similar situation with a lot of Osteoporosis cases.

Will: Yeah, when we’re stuck in that catabolic state and not going into that anabolic evening repair, regenerate phase of our day, our body is just in a constant state of like run down, I used this analogy last week, like if you’re just driving your car all the time and you never pulled over to like refill on gas, or do maintenance, so, it just wears down, and that’s what you will see, at like the joint level, as well as in the bones. If you’re not taking time to replenish or rebuild or if your system is not being stimulated to go into that mode of that rest and digest and repair and anabolic night sleep phase, then it’s just constantly on the go. Constantly burning, even if you’re trying to sleep.

Tony: Right, so in that state, which the catabolic state is a proper state for us to be in during the day, it’s the body’s job to break down tissues so that it can rebuild into something new. Like we were just talking about. But for a lot of reasons if someone gets stuck in that state, the body’s just kind of stuck in that break down state. That doesn’t mean that its mad and its attacking all tissue it can find. It’s just doing what its supposed to do in that state. So the trick is to help the body move out of that state and correct what’s ever causing that imbalance. And you can do that with a lot of nutritional changes and stuff like that.

Will: Yeah, you can learn more about like how to assess yourself of whether you’re in the catabolic state or anabolic state or whatever by working your way through that FREE digestive course that Tony mentioned earlier at kickitinthenuts.com.

Tony: Right. And we’re going to get into questions here in a second, but, um, so that’s one issue that can create a constant break down of tissue. Another issue that is really huge is what does the body do when resources that it needs are not coming in? Well, it has a backup for that. It has a lot of backups for that. And it’s called I got all these minerals stored here in my tissues and my bones.

Kinna: So you just become a cannibal? You just eat yourself to death?

Tony: You really do. It’s like you’re your own 7 Eleven. When you run out of something, you just go to the 7 Eleven…

Kinna: Except this pizza hasn’t been sitting here for 12 hours. It’s fresh.

Tony: Right. Right. Those little hotdogs on the metal rolling things. It’s like you just go pick one up. But this is very widely known in the like the body building world. Like that if you don’t eat that you’re going to lose muscle mass. Your body’s going to eat itself. So but we don’t translate that very well to other things all the time.

Will: I ran a marathon one time.

Tony: Oops!

Will: And lost 8 lbs. that day.

Kinna: Wow.

Will: And it did not come back. It was like tissue death from that. It was just like a way too high an energy demand from that day. And that happens to people not only from insane workouts, but also like if you’re just not digesting your food. Like if you don’t have enough stomach acid to break down protein, you need that protein from somewhere. So you’re going to start tapping into your own protein cause you’re made of protein.

Tony: Right. Right. So you could be eating it, but if you can’t break it down to those elemental nutrients that your body can use then your body’s like, I’m not getting it. I’m not getting it. You’re putting it in, but I’m not getting it. So then it finally says I’m just gonna go to 7 Eleven and get it myself. And a guy at the gym last week asked me, Tony have you ever done a marathon? And I was like I have a car. Why?

Kinna: Yeah, but that’s interesting cause if your weight never came back I wanna do a marathon.

Will: Yeah, no totally go do one.

Kinna: Okay. Alright.

Will: I couldn’t walk for a week either. I should’ve trained for it.

Tony: He’s talking about a different kind of weight.

Will: Yeah.

Kinna: Probably talking about muscles and stuff.

Tony & Will: Uh huh.

Tony: So think about that though when it comes to Osteoporosis, so many people don’t have their digestion working optimally. I mean we see only about 2 out of 10 people really have it working the way that it should.

Kinna: Yeah, that’s what I was about to ask. Does anybody these days?

Tony: They do. They really do. But think about this, you know, if your acid reflex drugs, you know, your PPI medications, so, if that’s a billion dollar industry, that’s a lot of people.

Will: Not to mention, Tums.

Tony: Sure, and all of the other things that can turn off acid. And, that’s just you know medications is just one possibility that can throw digestion out of whack. There’s many, many others, so, a lot of things can happen, that can cause digestion to not function correctly, now, the body is not getting what it needs, so it looks for it elsewhere. So, we find that a lot of people that are osteopenia, or border line Osteoporosis, or even full on Osteoporosis, if they can take steps, to improve digestion, and get real nutrients into the body, so the body can rebuild things, all of a sudden, then there is a new story that shows up, and it can take a while, it could take years, but think of how long your body has been mining itself, it doesn’t happen in two weeks. I guess we should at least answer a question.

Kinna: Maybe one, since I told them to stop baking, you know? Pull over and sign up, so that we can answer questions.

Tony: Right.

Kinna: Alright, Meg, from Andover Massachusetts. I’ve been told I am doomed, because I am short, small boned, white, female, of northern European decent. Please, say it isn’t so.

Tony: It isn’t so.

Kinna: Good.

Tony: Handled.

Kinna: Good, great. That one was answered.

Will: But, I would look at this profile, of this person, of somebody that would be more susceptible to it, not because she is European, but because she’s….

Tony: Blonde?

Will: No.

Kinna: Short?

Will: From Andover.

Tony: Oh.

Kinna & Will: Ahhh.

Will: No, because she is slender, skinny.

Tony: Sure.

Will: Most people, you can, you know, after you look at people chemistry for a long time, you can usually tell if they are going to be high or low blood pressure, just by looking at them, and most slender people are.

Kinna: How do we know she is slender?

Will: Cause she said so.

Kinna: She didn’t say so. She said small boned.

Will: Oh, small boned. Oh well, that.

Kinna: I’m small boned, I just have fat over it.

Will: No one, no one calls themselves small boned, but are like obese. I’ve never heard someone.

Kinna: I’m small boned.

Will: Well, no, you’re going to take all the credit for your bones that is causing the space.

Tony: Right.

Will: So, she is probably quite skinny, and with that, low blood pressure, and with that low minerals, electrolyte deficient, and usually with that, weak stomach acid. She’s not getting many of the nutrients from food, she’s low on minerals in general, she’s not breaking down protein well, so her body is mining itself like you just said.

Tony: Right, and the good news for Meg, is that I don’t think that she is doomed, for any of those things. I’ve been to Andover, it’s not so bad. And, Um.

Will: Really?

Tony: Yeah. And, uh, when you look at what you can do, to improve those situations, and give your body what it needs to rebuild things, you can really turn all of that around. If it is a problem for you already, but don’t look at things, like, um, genetic predisposition, and all of that stuff, because I, I feel like you can turn stuff like that around, when you take the right steps.

Kinna: Ok, Vicki, from Seattle, Washington. What causes Osteoporosis? Can you be genetically predisposed to Osteoporosis?

Tony: Yeah, all of that. I guess this is contagious, you can’t say genetically, I can’t say most of the words.

Kinna: So basically you just answered that right before.

Tony: I did. And you can be genetically predis….

Kinna: Predisposed?

Tony: Yeah. To have issues that could push you in the wrong direction. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t take steps to turn it around. It doesn’t mean that if your mom had Osteoporosis that you get to have it too. That’s just not the case at all.

Kinna: My dad had red hair and I have red hair.

Will: Nope. Totally random. Random.

Tony: I guess I’m wrong. Corrected. I stand corrected.

Kinna: Uh huh, corrected. Hello! Janie, my mom was diagnosed before she was 40. What causes it to effect some people so young?

Tony: One thing to look at is…

Kinna: Is she small boned, short and female from Northern Europe?

Tony: Is she from Andover? You know a big correlation that they put together in the Osteoporosis world, is that they say that it is very common once a woman hits menopause. That their bones will just fall a part.

Kinna: Start breaking.

Tony: Like the next day, they just disintegrate. No, but, that seems to be the time frame when things start to go south, and I think that we’ve talked about this on other shows and I know we’ve talked about it a lot in books and stuff is that menopause usually comes around when the body doesn’t have enough resources to make another human. So once, and with a lot of people, digestion seems to fade as we age. Those problems increase and digestion gets worse and worse. So, as resources go lower and lower, now you don’t have enough resources to make another human and mother nature says, well, I’m gonna help you out and I’m gonna shut that system down cause if you get pregnant and have a baby, you’re gonna be left with nothing.

Kinna: Wow, that sucks.

Tony: Cause it takes a lot of resources to make a person.

Kinna: Why can’t we all be like Benjamin Buttons and age backwards?

Will: That’d be weird though. Would you like know when you’re gonna be unborn and just come into…

Kinna: It makes more sense.

Tony: And to think that I would never have played with Legos yet. Like I’d be looking forward to that time.

Kinna: Yeah, like when you’re a hundred. I finally get to play.

Tony: I got me some Legos. Um, but that correlation makes sense that if menopause is showing up, because there’s a lack of resources doesn’t that make sense that the body would be saying I got no resources. Where can I get ‘em from? Oh, I can get ‘em from your tissues and your bones.

Will: Well, we did a whole podcast on early menopause a while ago, remember?

Tony: Did we?

Kinna: I don’t remember.

Tony: Yeah, we did. We did have an early menopause one.

Will: We did. Yeah. Right.

Tony: Sorry, I don’t know what my name is.

Kinna: We’re on episode 24. We’ve done a lot of topics at this point.

Tony: Shut up!

Will: Yeah, and you have a whole book on, Done With Menstrual Cramps, right?

Tony: Right. And that really focuses on that a lot.

Will: So if you’re concerned about that and you’re like looking at or might be in menopause or in that condition you might wanna read that, what was your first book? Done With Menstrual Cramps.

Tony: And somebody told me last week, that Done With or Kick Your Fat In The Nuts is way better than the Menstrual Cramp book. And I was like, I know.

Will: Well, you’re older and wiser.

Kinna: And you don’t have a period.

Tony: Right.

Kinna: So, you know, it makes sense.

Tony: But I thought that’s what made me think I know about menstrual cramps because I never get menstrual cramps.

Kinna: Uh huh. Well, you’re also not fat, so you don’t know about that either, so shut up and stop writing.

Tony: Ok. Next question.

Kinna: Janie…nope, we’ve already talked about Janie. Daniel, from Rochester, New York.

Tony: You know what, let’s do both these questions together.

Kinna: Ok.

Tony So you handle both of them and we’ll handle ‘em.

Kinna: Ok. Osteoporosis happens because your body needs calcium all the time and the western diet is increasingly acidic while lacking in absorbable calcium. Back in the day, cow’s milk contained the necessary enzymes to absorb the calcium, now the acidity of the milk combined with the lack of enzymes actually pulls calcium out of the bones into the blood, so that your muscles and heart and nervous system continue to function and you don’t die to death. Is there another way to die? You just fall and break a hip like your bones are made of glass.

Tony: I love it when people use technical terms like die to death like Daniel. He rocks.

Kinna: Die to death. He wanted to make sure that you were dead.

Tony: Right. So let’s hear the next one too, with that.

Kinna: Oh yeah. Yes, you are right.

Tony: Wait, who?

Kinna: This is Raventhram.

Tony: Yeah, Raventhram.

Kinna: From Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Tony: He had a question last week too and you should call us and tell us how to pronounce your name cause we’re probably brutalizing it.

Kinna: Exactly! We don’t know. We’re murdering the name. Yes, you are right, Daniel Bra…oh, I nearly said his last name. High consumption of simple carbohydrates, makes your body acidic, and our parathyroid hormone brings out calcium from bone to neutralize our body acid. If this happens for a long period, bone will become brittle. Exercise and consume more vegetables.

Tony: So I think before uh, me or Will say anything about this, I think it’s important for us to admit that there was a time that we both probably believed this 100% and now we don’t. In regards to the foods are causing us to be too acidic situation.

Will: Oh, yeah, that bit.

Tony: Yeah so, and this is a big thing. And I’ve even heard people and read people saying that our diet today makes our blood too acidic and so it’s melting our bones. And uh, so to understand what that means, the pH of the blood has this very narrow parameter. That if it goes outside of those parameters at all, we just die.

Kinna: You die to death.

Tony: You die to death. If you wanna use the official term. Um, so when we talk about a bloodstream that is leaning too acidic or too alkaline, it’s a very narrow margin that we’re talking about. It can change a lot, but your blood is not going to move acidic enough to where it’s melting stuff.

Will: Right.

Tony: Nothing’s gonna melt.

Will: The wicked witch of the west.

Tony: Maybe Raiders of the Lost Ark at the end?

Kinna: What about that witch? From you know…the….

Tony: The Oz.

Kinna: The Wizard of Oz.

Will: That’s what I’m saying. The wicked witch of the west.

Kinna: Oh, I didn’t hear that.

Will: Yeah, no. That would be really strong.

Tony: What about that lady who was chasing Dorothy?

Will: Yeah…no, no, no. The lady with the monkeys.

Kinna: And the shoes where the house landed on her.

Tony: Some Good Will Hunting or something?

Will: That’s not happening. Your blood is not that acidic, its maybe down to a 7.2 instead of 7.3 and that still would not melt your bones.

Kinna: I’m melting now.

Tony: Right. So don’t view it that way. And the other thing is that, I mean I’ve heard a number of view points of people saying that our diet is causing us to be too acidic and it is true that the body does have that backup plan where it can pull calcium out of places to change the pH of things, but there’s some other things in place that the body uses way before that. Like CO2 to change the pH of the blood. Do you wanna explain that a little bit?

Will: Yeah, so when we look at breath rate. We learn a lot about what your body’s doing to manage the pH and keep it just where it needs to be. So when we see someone with, say their bloodstream is too acid, let’s go with that.

Tony: Okay.

Will: The blood CO2 levels are a little bit higher because the usually because the body’s metabolizing carbohydrates at a rate faster than would be ideal. So they’ll tend to breathe a little quicker because their off gassing the CO2. You’re just expelling or exhaling the CO2 to keep the oxygen to CO2 pH levels…

Tony: Cause CO2 is acidic.

Will: Right. So you’re just dialing that in to keep perfect and it’s regulating that all the time by changing your breath rate to fix the amount of CO2 to O2. But just as many people’s blood is leaning too alkaline. And we see that with slow breath rates like every diabetic that we ever look at because they’re not good at burning carbohydrates for energy anymore because of the insulin resistance. They’re not producing a lot of CO2 so their body starts to breathe slower to try retain more of that CO2 and keep everything balanced. But if you look at that, and you say like oh, the diabetic’s too acidic, well not all, like the more diabetic he is, the more alkaline the bloodstream is.

Tony: Right, and if you tested that Type II diabetic and you looked at his urine pH then you would probably see a very acidic urine pH and then you would say see, he’s too acid. But there’s different compartments in the body that should be at different pHs for everybody. So to look at one number and say that a person is too acidic is wrong.

Will: Yeah, pH is way more complicated than its typically made out to be. You’re not meant to be acid. You’re not meant to be alkaline. You are meant to be a composite of polarities. With all these different charges inside the nucleus, inside the cell, between the cells and all the different parts of the intestinal tract.

Tony: Fancy word alert.

Will: Fancy words. You wanna get fancy? So there’s all sorts of different types of acidosis and alkalosis that you can be at the same time. You can be…

Kinna: No. No.

Tony: Shut your mouth!

Will: Really. You can be in respiratory alkalosis, but metabolic acidosis and potassium excess acidosis. It can be whacked out.

Tony: Right. Right.

Kinna: All these big words.

Will: Yeah, and they usually do flip flop as the body is trying to find homeostasis like you’ll be in multiple states at once.

Tony: And this might go over, but the important thing and this really gets me up on a soapbox a little bit because I fell for this for you know a long time.

Will: Yeah, me too.

Tony: But I was studying this and studying pH gurus and being drug down the wrong path, but the way they view it a lot of times is that they’ll take a food and then they’ll burn that food with a flame and then they’ll measure the ash to see whether it’s acid or alkaline. And then they’ll say that’s an acid forming food or an alkaline forming food. Well, where in the human body is there a flame?

Kinna: On top of my head.

Tony: Uh huh, with your redhead. Um, so it’s not a comparable thing and plus the body when it’s processing things there’s all this stuff that goes on and there’s all these variables that can cause it to process foods differently. So it’s just not a very good way to view things. So if you’re viewing them that way. Just stop it.

Will: Yeah, right. Yeah, know that like the health of your membranes determines a lot about how good your body is at regulating pHs. The speed of your metabolism going through glucose and proteins and fats that effects your pH. There’s a lot more complex things, but the good thing to remember if you’re trying to figure it all out is as you correct the main imbalances that we’ve talked about like fixing the anabolic/catabolic thing. Fixing the fast oxidizer/slow oxidizer imbalance, your pHs tend to just kind of follow suit and end up being balanced out because of that. So if you try to push it the other way and just augment your pH directly like by drinking a bunch of baking soda water or whatever else it is or alkaline water, it’s gonna screw things up.

Tony: But I do agree with both Daniel and Raveenthram. Um, trying to just say it fancy.

Kinna: Raveenthram. I think that’s how you say it? Raveenthram.

Tony: That’s how I say it. But I agree with both of them when they’re talking about you know especially problems with cow’s milk now and where it used to be and where it is now. And a lot of people now think, oh, I should be drinking lots of milk to help my bones get stronger and it isn’t working out for you.

Will: Right.

Tony: Because that calcium in there is not as accessible as…

Kinna: But if you got raw milk that would be good?

Tony: It could be better, yeah, for some people. So that’s I do buy into that as well. And you know what he’s saying about the enzymes and all that those are all factors, but they’re just not when you view them all in that way.

Will: Yeah, I agree with you. Like I’m not disagreeing with the fact that these like homogenized milks and things cause problems or that they do deplete calcium in the tissues or that the parathyroid does trigger calcium. I bet that’s happening. I’m just I think the main thing we were talking about it’s not because you’re getting too acid.

Tony: Right and it’s not the diet. It’s not the acid foods that they’re saying are the acid foods that are causing this for every person. And that’s real important to understand.

Kinna: Danny, from Bradford, UK. Osteoporosis can also happen through build up of Osteoclasts cells. These cells have bone formation. But dysfunctional Osteoclasts can also lead to Osteoporosis.

Tony: And I’m o.k. with that if you look at well, what’s making something called to be dysfunctional? And a lot of times it’s not that a cell just went rogue. A lot of times instead of building something up something is being broken down because those nutrients are needed or someone’s stuck in a catabolic state. It’s not that the body went haywire, like its viewed as.

Kinna: Alright. Christopher, is there a simple way, test, to know if you are susceptible to developing Osteoporosis? What are some simple techniques to prevent its development?

Tony: You know we did talk about some simple things to and we’ll call that our review because we’re about to wrap up.

Will: Yeah, sure.

Tony: But one thing I wanna say about the test, the bone density test, is that you know you hear a lot of people saying I got my test and I read it and at the end of the test it said, by the way, these tests are not that accurate. So I don’t know.

Kinna: And you owe us 5 million dollars.

Tony: Right. Even if you did it on the same machine, by the same doctor and you wore the same clothes that day, there may be some discrepancies in there. I don’t actually know how accurate they are or what they show, but that is something that they talk about a lot so there must be something to that. So I don’t know a way to truly understand how effective your bones are right now.

Kinna: Try breaking them and see if they break.

Tony: Yeah, but I think that those tests can show enough that you can see a range. Like a range is either going to show it’s either really good or that you need to sit down for a minute. And at least you can get an idea of where you’re at.

Kinna: Don’t move. We’re going to carry you from one place to another.

Tony: Roll you outta here. And please sign this release.

Will: Live in a bubble.

Tony: But don’t use a sharp pen while you’re signing. So um, but, let’s talk about some steps that we can do so we’re not going that direction.

Will: Yeah, some simple tests you can do on yourself and what I’ve seen people that are more prone to that. They tend to have low blood pressure, so they’re mineral deplete in general. They can tend to be stuck in a catabolic state. So we already talked about why that would be. So you would see things like a low urine pH, maybe protein on your urine dipstick. That would be…

Tony: Yeah, we talk about a urine dipstick in the 4 week course that you can check some other parameters as well.

Will: Yeah, so in that, the urine dipstick test is a really fancy one you can do to look at all these different things that’s present. And if you’re peeing out protein that’s a really good indication that you’re strong into catabolic….

Kinna: I just peed out a steak.

Will: Right. That would look weird.

Tony: That would hurt.

Will: But that’s a sign that of like you’re tapping, you’re mining your body for tissues to run on. So you’re not metabolizing proteins from your diet well. You’re in the tissue break down state. You might also see a high specific gravity, which you can also see on that dipstick test. And that would be another indication of being too catabolic.

Tony: Too breaking down tissue.

Will: Right. So those would be good little markers. If you’re low blood pressure, or high specific gravity, or peeing out protein, or have a really low urine pH. All those things could indicate like you might be more susceptible. Or if you have a really high urine pH and you’re taking vitamin D or doing other things that’s pulling calcium out of the tissues like any of the erroneous activities we talked about like in the cold sore episode or the common cold episode.

Tony: Right. Listen to those. And that’s a good thing to wrap up with is understanding that you know look at where vitamin D is appropriate for you. You may be getting plenty just by walking outside, but look at your urine pH. And look at am I getting cramps? You know understand, don’t just keep cramming it in because it’s the cool thing to do. Look at what’s right for you.

Kinna: Thought that was your stomach while ago growling and I thought someone needs to eat.

Tony: And it was the plane.

Kinna: Uh huh.

Tony: So what else does a person need to consider as they’re moving forward?

Will: Yeah, that their blood pressure’s balanced. Their pHs are balanced. Their specific gravity is right around where it should be. That they’re not taking hyper amounts of vitamin D and pulling calcium out of their tissues. That they’re not eating too many sugars. That would also pull calcium..

Kinna: Digestion.

Will: Yeah.

Tony: And what other common digestive symptoms they could look for to understand that they may not be breaking down their food correctly?

Will: Oh sure, yeah if they are constipated or have diarrhea. Those are two big things caused by opposite problems, but either one whether you’re constipated and don’t have enough stomach acid or if you have diarrhea and don’t have good bile flow, either one of those you’re not gonna get that all important digestive explosion sizzle thing happening where you get your nutrients from your food. Other digestive symptoms like if you have acid reflux or heartburn, if you’re burping a lot after meals or feel bloated in your upper abdomen. All those are indications you need to work on your stomach acid.

Tony: If you’re seeing food in your stool or a light colored stool.

Will: Yeah, or if you have low blood pressure. That would be another indication.

Tony: Right. If you have crazy cravings for sugar and carbs a lot that could be an indication. So you know look at those things because the digestion really is the main thing. Because your body has to be in a state where it can rebuild instead of break down, but when its going to be rebuilding it needs tools to do that. And that’s you pull that in through digestion. So look at those things for yourself and start working on those things to see if that brings you some improvement. Um, and uh and then bye.

Kinna: Alright?

Tony: So, check out some of the other podcasts on the vitamin D and the common cold, so you can get a better ideal for those. And go to iTunes and leave us a review. Tell us what you thought and then maybe we won’t like you anymore.

Kinna: The way you ended that a while ago it was so abrupt it was kind of like one of my dates.

Tony: Yeah. And bye.

Kinna: Yeah. Exactly. So if you wanna learn more about how to look at your own chemistry, you can read any of Tony’s books or take the FREE 4 week digestion course at kickitinthenuts.com. Until the next time…

Tony: Also, where can we find Will on Facebook?

Kinna: Oh, we can find Will, which I was gonna tell you earlier, my body of knowledge page was down.

Will: What?

Kinna: Yeah, I was looking for it earlier and it was down.

Will: No.

Kinna: So you may wanna check on that.

Will: I will.

Kinna: But it’s under my body of knowledge.

Tony: I’m pretty sure she just typed it in wrong, but yeah, check out that page.

Kinna: No, I typed it in twice and it said, sorry this page is no longer available.

Will: Well, you can find me…

Kinna: Probably because of all the nude photos of yourself.

Will: I might have gotten banned. Yeah, I thought that was o.k. on Facebook. No, but you can definitely find me at mybodyofknowledge.net. My website.

Kinna: I’ll send the ones from my phone and you can upload those.

Will: Okay.

Tony: Bye-bye.

Kinna: Bye.