Advice on treatment needed.

[Bo]

Hi all,

my mother(she is 40+) has a lack of calcium and vitamin D as was shown by her doctor(her bones were very weak, it's what the doctor said), so the doctor gave her CaD 500/440 melon.

she is using it for 2 years now, and she feels nausea every time she uses it, ok on the note of that medicine it says a side-effect is feeling nausea, no big deal here it think, but I did a search on this medicine and I found out that one of the ingredients are sojaoil, and if I remember correctly soja-oil was bad? http://db.cbg-meb.nl/Bijsluiters/h31003.pdf

she told me she doesn't feel well every time she uses this medicine, and she doesn't really want to take this medicine anymore, and she asked me if she should stop using it, but I don't know what to say.

She did ask the doctor for a different medicine, and the doctor adviced her some hormone medicine, called Femosterine, but she didn't want to use any hormone stuff, so she had to deal with this.

Should she just eat some particular food or diet instead of the medicine or something else?

all advice is very appreciated.

- Bo

 

[GRiM]

You say your mother have lack of Calcium and vitamin D; How about eating food that contain lots of those two substances?(and/or supplements) Maybe I misunderstand something here.

 

[Bo]

You say your mother have lack of Calcium and vitamin D; How about eating food that contain lots of those two substances?(and/or supplements) Maybe I misunderstand something here.

this is what I found on what a woman between the age of needs:

Calcium/a day

Adult woman (25 - 50 Years) 1000
(from: http://www.osteoporoseinfo.be/nl/Home/Voorkomen%20osteoporose/Voeding%20en%20recepten)

so she should eat lots of brocollie, spinage and cheese for Calcium?

and for Vitamine D she should eat lots of fish, meat and eggs?

- Bo


a note , on her medicine it says Vitamine D3(cholecalciferol)

 

[ziggystarlust]

What is the medical condition behind the problem? Osteoporos or more than that? Adam, in your second post there are a few good ideas re. nutritional food but there is more that could be done. For example...the number one supplier of vitamin D is the sun. Our bodies manufacture it naturally when recieving sunlight. And yes, all green leafy vegetables have amounts of calcium, but not just broccolli and spinach. More research required there. As for cheese? Dairy from pasturiezed milk is generally not a good idea. Raw milk, organic milk or cheese made with raw milk would be many more times beneficial. Eggs, again organic or free range. Commercial eggs aren't that good for you either in comparison. There is also high grade calcium tablets called "coral calcium", but there are probbly synergies with other compounds that would help the assimilation of the calcium and the vitamin D. The best site that I could recommend for further study would be _http://www.curezone.com. It is a large site with a vast amount of health information. Somewhat overloading, but with patience, I am sure you will find the necessary information that you require. But I must repeat, that it is necessary to know what caused the problem in the first place. Perhaps a good doctor of "homeopathy" would help. Good luck.

 

[the_hammer]

With the age your mother has, she has lost the ability to make her bones stronger, but to preserve the strength that they have, I would suggest that she exercises. Also "Alendronat" seems to give good results, since they slow down the destruction of bone material.

Also if she doesn't want to take any hormones, it might be a good idea to eat the natural estrogenes, since estrogenes slows the cells that eats bone material. Only of course if she isn't at risk for getting breast cancer.

And as ziggystarlust said, going out into the sunlight is also an idea, since we produce D3-vitamins in the skin when being exposed to sunlight. 15 minuites x 2 a week should be enough.

 

[tree]

Cod liver fish oil is a great source of Vitamin D, not to mention 20 minutes/ day of sunshine on bare skin... of course work up to that if you are fair-skinned.

For Calcium, there are plenty of foods rich in Calcium as mentioned in previous posts. I have also come across a supplement: New Chapter Bone Strength Take Care made from bioavailable whole foods. It contains ocean-harvested AlgaeCal instead of limestone in addition to naturally occurring magnesium, vitamins K2 (MK-7) and D3. I have had very good results personally with this company's products and I also recommend them to my clients (I'm an acupuncturist).

Hope that's helpful.

tree

 

[B-Dublin]

Dear Adam

I am a woman too, have always gone my own way re so called 'medicine' as I found out that docs don't know! They are taught by the scripts of the chmical industry and if they really want to understand and learn they go and learn after they have finished their official training.

My recommendation re information is www.mercola.com is a great source for all kind of medical information and extremely critical.

My personal experience is: 1. ALWAYS AVOID DRUGS FROM CHEMICAL INDUSTRY.....but those you mention are known in some newer studies for their health damaging ability as they are causing a constant inflammation in the bones! Imagine!
2. get information re healthy nutrition which means in cases of bones problem ALWAYS avoiding intake of milk and of course all diary products as they are causing those dificiencies (in all real investigations, means those that did not fill the pockets of profiteers) they found out that women with osteoporosis (or starting this disease or just a calcium difficiency) did have large amounts of the so called 'healthy' milk products (hint: growth hormons in cows are not the only thing dangerous for our body)
3. get a good supplement for mum (a good brand of spirulina; there are some not so good out, contaminated with heavy metal, so have a good look)
4. it is not possible to post it all here but I have a 25 years experience with all this in my own life and helping others who had health and nutritional problems....I found out that there is always a way but one has to DO things, change habits and consciously eat and life....in old days people knew much more and all that is natural is nowadays called 'nonsense, spooky' or they forbid the sales of these kind of things. It surely is a bit tricky to find the right way as there is a lot of DISINFORMATION but once one is perseverant one can find.

If you have any further questions, anytime!

 

[alwyn]

Hi,

Nettle infusions and oatstraw infusions are wonderful sources of calcium, among other things. Get good organic herbs, take a quart canning jar, fill it up 1/4 of the way with one herb, pour over boiling water,let steep eight hours, drink one cup to two cups a day. Rotate the herbs, every two days, or every two weeks. These are tonic herbs, which means that they are like food, and can be 'eaten' as much as one likes. Sun and fish oil for vitamin D. Check out Susan Weed on the web, she has lots of great herbal info for women.

 

[Azur]

Hi all,

my mother(she is 40+) has a lack of calcium and vitamin D as was shown by her doctor(her bones were very weak, it's what the doctor said), so the doctor gave her CaD 500/440 melon.
- Bo

Adam,

Something you can look into: L-Lysine. I discovered this amino-acid after watching an interview with Linus Pauling (See: _http://youtube.com/watch?v=-GRUIiYlziw).

It is non-toxic, i.e. water soluble (so no matter how much you take it is relatively safe). He mentioned it as part of his Heart Disease prevention/remediation treatment suggestion (Vitamin C and Lysine).

One of the characteristics of Lysine is that it facilitates the uptake of Calcium. It is almost ALWAYS advertised as being a cold sore or even a Herpes cure, curiously.

Here's a Wikipedia entry on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysine

Properties

L-Lysine is a necessary building block for all protein in the body. L-Lysine plays a major role in calcium absorption; building muscle protein; recovering from surgery or sports injuries; and the body's production of hormones, enzymes, and antibodies.

It's one of those acids (like Vitamin C, another water soluble, non-toxic acid, see Post Scriptum) that Humans cannot synthesize on their own and only get from ingestion.

Non-toxic (water-soluble), meaning that it shouldn't hurt and has the properties of facilitating calcium uptake sound like a good thing in this case.

Please get an opinion from a qualified medical scientist. Notice I don't mean an M.D. here necessarily, but a bio-chemist.

Cheers.

Dan

P.S. For such an important element of most animals' bio-functioning (viz. heart disease, if Linus Pauling got it right), how did synthesis of ascorbate in humans and a very small group of other animals get "selected" out? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C

Excerpt:

The vast majority of animals and plants are able to synthesize their own vitamin C, through a sequence of four enzyme-driven steps, which convert glucose to vitamin C.[6] The glucose needed to produce ascorbate in the liver (in mammals and perching birds) is extracted from glycogen; ascorbate synthesis is a glycogenolysis-dependent process.[22] In reptiles and birds the biosynthesis is carried out in the kidneys.

Among the animals that have lost the ability to synthesise vitamin C are simians (specifically the suborder haplorrhini), guinea pigs, a number of species of passerine birds (but not all of them), and in apparently many major families of bats and perhaps all of them. Humans have no enzymatic capability to manufacture vitamin C. The cause of this phenomenon is that the last enzyme in the synthesis process, L-gulonolactone oxidase, cannot be made by the listed animals because the gene for this enzyme, Pseudogene ΨGULO, is defective.[23] The mutation has not been lethal because vitamin C is abundant in their food sources. It has been found that species with this mutation (including humans) have adapted a vitamin C recycling mechanism to compensate.[24]

Most simians consume the vitamin in amounts 10 to 20 times higher than that recommended by governments for humans.[25] This discrepancy constitutes the basis of the controversy on current recommended dietary allowances (see Vitamin C as a macronutrient - Evolutionary rationales).

It has been noted that the loss of the ability to synthesize ascorbate strikingly parallels the evolutionary loss of the ability to break down uric acid. Uric acid and ascorbate are both strong reducing agents. This has led to the suggestion that in higher primates, uric acid has taken over some of the functions of ascorbate.[26] Ascorbic acid can be oxidised (broken down) in the human body by the enzyme ascorbic acid oxidase.

An adult goat, a typical example of a vitamin C-producing animal, will manufacture more than 13,000 mg of vitamin C per day in normal health and the biosynthesis will increase "many fold under stress".[27] Trauma or injury has also been demonstrated to use up large quantities of vitamin C in humans.[28] Some microorganisms such as the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae have been shown to be able to synthesize vitamin C from simple sugars.[29][30]

 

[Bo]

Thanks for all the advices, they are very helpfull!

Azur:

Please get an opinion from a qualified medical scientist. Notice I don't mean an M.D. here necessarily, but a bio-chemist.

I will do this first then. thanks.

Tree:

Cod liver fish oil is a great source of Vitamin D, not to mention 20 minutes/ day of sunshine on bare skin... of course work up to that if you are fair-skinned.

Well that's a problem, the sun is almost never shining here, it is always raining. Even if the sun starts to shine, it only shines for 10 min then it starts to rain again..you just gotta love the netherlands..

- Bo

 

[ArdVan]

It's strange that a mixture of calcium and vitamin D causes nausea. Are you sure that your mother isn't allergic to vitamin D?

Maybe this link may have helpful information for you:

_http://www.cfs-recovery.org/vitamin_d_recovery.htm

 

[tree]

Hi Adam,
I live in the Pacific NW...the Olympic Peninsula....i.e. rainforest!!! Lots of clouds and rain here too. I give my little boy one teaspoon of cod liver oil daily for vitamin D he can't get from the sun currently. I use Carlson's...as recommended by my naturopath.

Also another thought, I often eat sardines (little bones included) as a source of calcium and natural fish oils.

alwyn, thanks for the bit about the nettle and oatstraw infusions...I would like to try that.

tree

 

[Ruth]

She did ask the doctor for a different medicine, and the doctor adviced her some hormone medicine, called Femosterine, but she didn't want to use any hormone stuff, so she had to deal with this.

I did a google search on the hormone Femosterine. The only result I got was this thread! Perhaps the spelling is different? I would like to know a bit more about it. Could you tell me if it has a generic name?

I think much about treating medical problems is about balancing the risk of taking a drug with the likelyhood of achieving a desired outcome. Doctors try to do this by prescribing chemicals, or pharmacologically, to redress a person's imbalance. Sometimes they don't adequately explain the risks of taking certain things. But then risk is a part of life.

 

[Bo]

I did a google search on the hormone Femosterine. The only result I got was this thread! Perhaps the spelling is different? I would like to know a bit more about it. Could you tell me if it has a generic name?

I think much about treating medical problems is about balancing the risk of taking a drug with the likelyhood of achieving a desired outcome. Doctors try to do this by prescribing chemicals, or pharmacologically, to redress a person's imbalance. Sometimes they don't adequately explain the risks of taking certain things. But then risk is a part of life.

ye sorry the spelling was wrong, the correct name is Femoston

Ardvan:

It's strange that a mixture of calcium and vitamin D causes nausea. Are you sure that your mother isn't allergic to vitamin D?

Maybe this link may have helpful information for you:

_http://www.cfs-recovery.org/vitamin_d_recovery.htm

thank you , I will read trough this tonight.

-Bo

 

[notanothermonday]

Adam as a doctor of natural medicine I would suggest that you go to someone who understands the interactions that may be going on in your Mother's body. A naturopath, chiropractor who works with nutrition and homeopath come to mind. Any doctor who is going to take the time to get to know your Mother.
Mineral depletion in bones may be a result of many different sub clinical pathologies going on in her body. It is important to see someone who is willing to go into detail about what has led up to this condition and look at her complete health history. Problems like this do not form in one day they form over a period of time (a lifetime) and require careful examination. Sub-clinical pathologies are rarely detected by MD due to the fact that they are not looking for them and they usually have a pill to fit symptom profiles, such as alendronat.

If it were as easy as a deficiency issue then taking minerals would be an easy solution but let's say in addition to a deficiency issue she is having an issue with digestion and absorption. She could take all the calcium in the world and not be absorbing it in appropriate levels to make a difference. This deficiency could go beyond companion nutrients that aid in absorption

Find out if her doctor has done blood work and what lab tests were performed. Parathyroid hormone levels in the blood and blood Ca+ levels should be a part of that.

There are so many possibilities to consider that is why it is important for a doctor to do a comprehensive history with a patient using all bits of information to tell them what needs to be done next.

Best of luck to you and your Mother.