Save Our Bones Bulletin: Sleep More To Eat Better, Bone Microarchitecture Shown As Best Predictor Of Fracture, Failed Obesity Drug Tries For A Second Act As An Osteoporosis Drug

In this month’s Bulletin, we’ll look at a study that found a surprising way to improve the quality of its participants’ diets.

Next, we bring you the latest on how pioneering researchers are dismantling the Medical Establishment’s faulty guidelines for diagnosing osteoporosis. Through extensive imaging of thousands of participants, these scientists have identified new and better diagnostic metrics for predicting fragility fractures. Could the era of the primacy of Bone Mineral Density (BMD) tests be drawing to a close?

And last, you’ll learn about the failed obesity drug that medical researchers are attempting to repurpose as a new osteoporosis treatment.

Sleep More To Improve Your Diet

A British study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has found that extending sleep helps to improve dietary habits.

The study’s primary goal was to establish the efficacy of personal counseling to increase sleep hours for participants who were getting less than the recommended minimum of seven hours of sleep per night.

Not only did they find it possible to get more sleep with the help of appropriate recommendations, but surprisingly, the study’s authors discovered that participants who increased their sleep also decreased the amount of sugar they consumed.¹

Relevant Excerpt

”Principal investigator, Dr Wendy Hall, of the Department of Nutritional Sciences said: “The fact that extending sleep led to a reduction in intake of free sugars, by which we mean the sugars that are added to foods by manufacturers or in cooking at home as well as sugars in honey, syrups and fruit juice, suggests that a simple change in lifestyle may really help people to consume healthier diets.”

In the trial, 21 volunteers who slept for less than the recommended seven hours a night, were sent to counseling to learn how to change their habits so that they could sleep for longer.

They were asked to keep a constant bedtime, resist caffeine and food before bed and try and relax in the evenings. On average the groups were able to add 90 minutes to their daily sleep patterns over the seven day study period.

Food diaries kept throughout the trial showed that by the end of the week, they were naturally eating less sugar and carbs than at the start. In contrast, no change was seen in a control group whose sleep did not improve.”¹

Getting adequate sleep is essential for maintaining good health, including for building strong bones. This new finding, which links sleep and diet, underscores how interconnected our health habits are.

Whether you’re hoping to stabilize your blood sugar, lose some weight, or protect your bones, sleep is an essential part of the equation.

Synopsis

A British study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that participants who extended their sleep also decreased their intake of sugars and other harmful simple carbohydrates.

Study Exposes Failure Of Current Osteoporosis Diagnosis Standards

A groundbreaking new study has begun the process of dismantling the Medical Establishment’s faulty standards for diagnosing osteoporosis.

Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have conducted the largest prospective study of its kind. Using high-resolution tomography imagining to assess bone characteristics beyond bone mineral density, the study authors were able to locate bone morphology that more closely predicted fracture.

Assessing the microstructure of two types of bone (compact bone and spongy bone) proved a more accurate way to predict fragility fractures than performing a DXA scan.

Relevant Excerpt

”The multi-national study included more than 7,000 older women and men from five North American and European countries. Participants – eight research cohorts at the Mayo Clinic, the Framingham Study in Massachusetts and sites in France, Canada, Switzerland and Sweden that comprise the Bone Microarchitecture International Consortium – underwent scanning measurements of the bones of the arms and legs.

While just eight percent of participants met the diagnostic criteria for osteoporosis, 11 percent of participants experienced a fracture. Those who experienced fracture were more likely to be older, female, have a lower BMI, use osteoporosis medications and have a previous fracture. Participants who sustained fractures had worse bone measurements for nearly all parameters compared to those who did not fracture.

The scientists' analysis demonstrated that several measures of bone density and structure at different sites on the bone – including the density of the compact bone tissue and the thickness of the spongy bone tissue at the wrist – were predictive of fracture. Failure load, the stress under which bone begins to fracture, was the bone characteristic most strongly associated with risk of fracture.”²

This finding is consistent with the founding principles of The Save Institute. From the very beginning, the Osteoporosis Reversal Program professed that there is much more to bone health than mineral density and placed emphasis on other bone health indicators, such as tensile strength.

It’s telling that one of the traits shared among those most likely to experience fracture is the use of osteoporosis medications.

The Save Institute was founded on the knowledge that osteoporosis drugs are not merely unnecessary, they are in fact counterproductive — doing more harm to your bones than good. This new study reveals that the bone-measurement these drugs aim to change, BMD, isn’t even the best indication of fracture risk.

A pH-balanced diet, regular weight-bearing exercise, and attention to maintaining overall health through bone-healthy habits are smarter, safer, more effective ways to prevent fracture.

Synopsis

A study has found that bone microarchitecture, not BMD obtained through DXA scans, is the most effective metric for predicting fragility fractures.

Big Pharma To Develop New Hormone-Based Osteoporosis Drug

In 2012, medical researcher Bruce Spiegelman made the news when he published a study identifying a hormone called irisin. In that study, Spiegelman and his associates showed that irisin, which is produced during exercise, could help improve participants body fat makeup.

However, the widely touted “exercise drug” that irisin seemed poised to become never emerged, and millions of dollars in venture capital money dissipated.

Now irisin is back in the news, as Spiegelman’s team at Harvard University Medical School attempts to reimagine the hormone as a new osteoporosis drug.

Relevant Excerpt

In a study published in the journal Cell, a team led by scientists at Harvard University Medical School found that injections of irisin in mice increased sclerostin, a protein produced by osteocytes that regulate bone formation. The team argued the findings could lead to future treatments for osteoporosis.

“These results are potential game changers in the fields of metabolism, muscle-bone biology, and exercise,” said the study’s senior author, Bruce Spiegelman, in a statement. “We show that irisin works directly on osteocytes, the most abundant cell type in bone.”

A paper that Spiegelman published in Nature in 2012 triggered the initial excitement over irisin. In that study, Spiegelman and colleagues identified irisin as a cleaved version of the FNDC5 membrane protein. The team showed that irisin, which is produced during exercise, could help turn unhealthy white fat into calorie-burning brown fat.³

The study was conducted on mice. Researchers injected them intermittently with irisin for six days, and observed higher levels of sclerostin in the animals’ blood and increased bone mass.⁴

This scramble to find a profitable use for a failed drug is business as usual for Big Pharma. The Save Institute team will keep an eye on irisin, along with other drugs-in-development that attempt to undermine healthy living with a quick-fix promise
and a long list of terrible side-effects.

Synopsis

A new study has found that a hormone once touted as a potential obesity drug could become a new osteoporosis drug.

Apply What You’ve Learned To Your Life

We sincerely hope that you’ll use your newfound knowledge about the power of sleep, the importance of other bone health parameters besides density, and Big Pharma’s unrelenting efforts to market new osteoporosis drugs to improve the health of your bones and the quality of your life.

References

¹ Sarah Knapton. “Sleep yourself slim: how an extra 90 mins in bed can stop sugar cravings.” The Telegraph. 10 January 2018. Web. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/01/10/sleep-slim-extra-90-mins-bed-can-stop-sugar-cravings/

² “Beyond bone mineral density: Additional bone traits predict risk for fracture.” Press Release. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. EurkAlert! 28 November 2018. Web. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-11/bidm-bbm112718.php

³ Angus Liu. “Could a once-abandoned obesity drug be revived in osteoporosis?” FierceBiotech. 13 December 2018. Web. https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/could-a-once-abandoned-obesity-drug-be-revived-osteoporosis

⁴ Bruce M. Spiegelman, et al. “Irisin Mediates Effects on Bone and Fat via αV Integrin Receptors.” Cell. volume 175, issue 7, P1756-1768.E17. December 13, 2018. Web. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)31334-5