Which Osteoporosis Medication, If Any, Is Right For You?

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Osteoporosis can affect anyone, but disproportionately affects postmenopausal women. We can adjust our diet and exercise to stave this off, but if that fails, there are also pharmaceutical options.

  • There are drugs that slow the breakdown of bones, and drugs that build bones back up. There are also drugs that mimic the function of estrogen on bones while inhibiting other estrogenic effects (useful if for example one has an elevated breast cancer risk).

• Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

  • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise.

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

How to touch your toes... and beyond! (2:21)

Your muscles are already stretchier than you think. However, you will have to convince your nerves of this, first. Here's how to bamboozle the nerves and get to your next level of stretching:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖

🦴 MAIN FEATURE

Which Osteoporosis Medication, If Any, Is Right For You?

We’ve written about osteoporosis before, so here’s a quick recap first in case you missed these:

• The Bare-bones Truth About Osteoporosis

• Exercises To Do (And Exercises To Avoid) If You Have Osteoporosis

• We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of

• Vit D + Calcium: Too Much Of A Good Thing?

All of those look and diet and/or exercise, with “diet” including supplementation. But what of medications?

So many choices (not all of them right for everyone)

The UK’s Royal Osteoporosis Society says of the very many osteoporosis meds available:

…before then going on to list a pageful of things it will depend on, and giving no specific information about what prescriptions or proscriptions may be made based on those factors.

Source: Royal Osteoporosis Society | Which medication should I take?

We’ll try to do better than that here, though we have less space. So let’s get down to it…

First line drug offerings

After diet/supplementation and (if applicable) hormones, the first line of actual drug offerings are generally biphosphates.

Biphosphates work by slowing down your osteoclasts—the cells that break down your bones. They may sound like terrible things to have in the body at all, but remember, your body is always rebuilding itself and destruction is a necessary act to facilitate creation. However, sometimes things can get out of balance, and biphosphates help tip things back into balance.

Common biphosphates include Alendronate/Fosamax, Risedronate/Actonel, Ibandronate/Boniva, and Zolendronic acid/Reclast.

A common downside is that they aren’t absorbed well by the stomach (despite being mostly oral administration, though IV versions exist too) and can cause heartburn / general stomach upset.

An uncommon downside is that messing with the body’s ability to break down bones can cause bones to be rebuilt-in-place slightly incorrectly, which can—paradoxically—cause fractures. But that’s rare and is more common if the drugs are taken in much higher doses (as for bone cancer rather than osteoporosis).

Bone-builders

If you already have low bone density (so you’re fighting to rebuild your bones, not just slow deterioration), then you may need more of a boost.

Bone-building medications include Teriparatide/Forteo, Abaloparatide/Tymlos, and Romosozumab/Evenity.

These are usually given by injection, usually for a course of one or two years.

Once the bone has been built up, it’ll probably be recommended that you switch to a biphosphate or other bone-stabilizing medication.

Estrogen-like effects, without estrogen

If your osteoporosis (or osteoporosis risk) comes from being post-menopausal, estrogen is a very common (and effective!) prescription. However, some people may wish to avoid it, if for example you have a heightened breast cancer risk, which estrogen can exacerbate.

So, medications that have estrogen-like effects post-menopause, but without actually increasing estrogen levels, include: Raloxifene/Evista, and also all the meds we mentioned in the bone-building category above.

Raloxifene/Evista specifically mimics the action of estrogen on bones, while at the same time blocking the effect of estrogen on other tissues.

Learn more…

Want a more thorough grounding than we have room for here? You might find the following resource useful:

List of 82 Osteoporosis Medications Compared (this has a big table which is sortable by various variables)

Take care!

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Hearing So Clear It Has No Peers

Have you heard the good news? A team of top German engineers has just unveiled the world’s very first hearing aids with dual processing, and the results are clear... Literally.

Why is this so special? Thanks to this cutting-edge German technology, these tiny devices capture speech and noise separately, resulting in groundbreaking levels of noise reduction and speech clarity.

Hear.com is so confident you’ll love their product, all devices come with a 45-day no-risk trial. They’ve already got 385,000 happy customers—and counting—and their award-winning customer service will help with anything you need.

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌎 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Tooth enamel damage in celiac disease may be caused by an autoimmune reaction

• New advances mean many patients go home same day after knee replacement

• Living alone doesn't have to mean being lonely, says study

• How do we learn? Neuroscientists pinpoint how memories are likely to be stored in the brain

• Study suggests dental professionals can play a crucial role in identifying signs of chronic disease

• Continuous glucose monitoring to improve health in non-diabetics

• Multi-ingredient herbal supplement boosts cognitive speed and gut health in seniors

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

It's On Me: Accept Hard Truths, Discover Your Self, and Change Your Life – by Dr. Sara Kuburic

This isn't about bootstrapping and nor is it a motivational pep talk. What it is, however, is a wake-up call for the wayward, and that doesn't mean "disaffected youth" or such. Rather, therapist Dr. Sara Kuburic tackles the problem of self-loss.

It's about when we get so caught up in what we need to do, should do, are expected to do, are in a rut of doing... That we forget to also live. After all, we only get one shot at life so far as we know, so we might as well live it in whatever way is right for us.

That probably doesn't mean a life of going through the motions.

The writing style here is personal and direct, and it makes for quite compelling reading from start to finish.

Bottom line: if ever you find yourself errantly sleepwalking through life and would like to change that, this is a book for you.

Click here to check out It's On Me, and take control of what's yours!

Wishing you a healthy day in every way,

The 10almonds Team