BECAUSE the Philippines has a young population, most of whom are under 30 years old, the bone disease osteoporosis has not been given much attention.

But in many countries with aging populations, osteoporosis has been dubbed the “silent killer”, especially for women—although recent medical research have shown that men can also be afflicted by the disease.

I read up a lot about osteoporosis primarily because I live with my still-active 82-year-old mother. Also because, well, being 45, I must admit I do sometimes feel the wind whistling through my bones. There have also been a few times when getting up from a stationary position after a while can sometimes be, ahem, a bit taxing.

While Mama is still up and about, and can manage our stairs, albeit slowly, I make sure she holds on tightly to me whenever we negotiate certain areas in the mall or in dimly lit places. She has to take deliberate steps when she walks around so as not to slip.

I have nightmares about what happened to my grandmother happening to my mother. my lola, who was in her 70s, slipped and fell while going about the house, breaking her leg. She spent quite some time at the National Orthopedic Hospital, with her leg in traction, before we were able to bring her home. while she was always full of energy and fiercely went about her business in and out of the house, I was so surprised how quickly she deteriorated even though her leg was technically repaired. She never walked quite well again after that. Suddenly she was just bedridden, and then she was gone.

According to the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF), a nonprofit, nongovernment organization in Switzerland, osteoporosis, which literally means “porous bone”, is a disease “in which the density and quality of bone are reduced. As the bones become more porous and fragile, the risk of fracture is greatly increased. The loss of bone occurs ‘silently’ and progressively. Often there are no symptoms until the first fracture occurs.”

It has long been considered an old person’s disease, but what few people realize is that bone breakdown can begin as early as the age of 25.

While human bones are living tissues that naturally undergo a constant breakdown and renewal process, this changes during the mid-20s, when the deterioration of our bones begins. 

I wouldn’t have believed this until my gal pal Miggy, who is nowhere near senior citizenship, broke her little toe two years ago after someone accidentally stepped on her bare foot at the beach. As soon as we got back to Manila, she had her foot checked and mended, but was told she already had osteoporosis. (Which, of course, made her feel much older than her real age. I tell you, these doctors are depressing!)

Studies also show that smokers, those who ingest alcohol liberally, and people with low-calcium diets and generally sedentary lifestyles are susceptible to osteoporosis. (Miggy, lay off Facebook!) Owing to our hormones and petite frames, women are more prone to this disease than men.

Monthly periods and pregnancy also drain the body of calcium—the nutrient which builds and strengthens bones—while menopause accelerates bone loss even more, as the body produces less and less estrogen, which helps protect bones, according to experts.

While there are no exact figures on how many are afflicted with osteoporosis in the Philippines, population figures from the National Statistics Office show there are close to 4.8 million women aged 50 and older, and most, if not all, at risk for the bone disease. Deadly sa kababaihan, indeed. 

Some of the tell-tale signs of this “silent killer” are the following: the stooped back, loss of height, and the easy breakage of bones in the back, hips, wrists and ankles. Fractured bones, however, are not the end of it: according to the IOF, 30 percent of those who develop a hip fracture never walk again, while 20 percent die in a year’s time. Just like my lola.

To ensure optimum bone health, most doctors recommend calcium-laden products such as milk. A glass of Anlene, for instance, contains 500 mg of calcium, while Anlene Gold has 600 mg per glass. Anlene is not just ordinary milk, by the way; it is especially formulated for adults—enriched with the essential bone nutrients like calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, zinc and protein.

Anlene also recently published a breakthrough clinical study that showed women who drank two glasses of Anlene daily reduced their bone breakdown within four weeks (based on evidence from a 16-week bone-marker trial and additional Anlene research). Imagine that!

Of course, drinking milk alone won’t save your bones. It’s important for women to also engage in regular exercise such as running, walking, strength training, and yoga or Pilates. A diet rich in calcium is also recommended, and this can be found in soy-based foods like tofu, as well as dark, leafy green vegetables.

Another way to improve bone density is to increase one’s intake of vitamin D, which makes it easier for bones to absorb calcium. Vitamin D can be found in fatty fish like salmon and mackerel, fish liver oil and egg yolks. Recommended calcium intake for women between the ages of 25 and 50 years is 750 mg a day; and more for those who are older, pregnant or lactating. As for vitamin D, the Recommended Daily Allowance for women aged 19 to 50 is 600 IU (international units). 

With Anlene, a proper diet and regular exercise, we girls may lick this silent killer yet.

For more information about osteoporosis, visit the IOF web site at iofbonehealth.org, or Anlene at anlene.com.au/default.asp?menuid=34 for more tips on how to help our bones.

The cause of autism may be faulty mitochondria December 3rd, 2010

AUTISM is a puzzling phenomenon. in its pure form it is an inability to understand the emotional responses of others that is seen in people of otherwise normal—sometimes above normal—intelligence. however, it is often associated with other problems, and can also appear in mild and severe forms. This variability has led many people to think of it as a spectrum of symptoms rather than a single, clear-cut syndrome. and that variability makes it hard to work out what causes it.

There is evidence of genetic influence, but no clear pattern of inheritance. The thought that the underlying cause may be hereditary, though, is one reason for disbelieving the hypothesis, which gained traction a few years ago but is now discredited, that measles vaccinations cause autism.

One suggestion that does pop up from time to time is that the process which leads to autism involves faulty mitochondria. The mitochondria are a cell’s powerpacks. They disassemble sugar molecules and turn the energy thus liberated into a form that biochemical machinery can use. Mitochondrial faults could be caused by broken genes, by environmental effects, or by a combination of the two.

Nerve cells have a huge demand for energy, so a failure of the mitochondria would certainly affect them. The question is, could it cause autism? to try to find out Cecilia Giulivi of the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues studied the mitochondria of ten children, aged between two and five years, who had been diagnosed with autism. They have just published their results in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Extracting nerve cells from the brains of children for a study like this is obviously out of the question. Instead, Dr Giulivi used immune-system cells called lymphocytes as surrogates. Lymphocytes, like nerve cells, use a lot of energy and thus rely heavily on their mitochondria. They are also easy to extract from blood. Dr Giulivi and her colleagues did just that, and then examined the activity of the lymphocytes’ mitochondria.

The children in question were randomly selected from a previous study on autism. They were matched with ten children of similar ages and ethnic backgrounds who were developing normally. Dr Giulivi found that mitochondria from children with autism consumed far less oxygen than those from the control group. that is a sign of lower activity. one important set of enzymes—NADH oxidases—used, on average, only a third as much oxygen in autistic children as they did in non-autists, and eight of the autistic children had significantly lower NADH-oxidase activity than is normal.

The mitochondria of the autistic children also leaked damaging oxygen-rich chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide. These are a normal by-product of mitochondrial activity, but are usually mopped up by special enzymes before they can escape and cause harm—for instance, by damaging a cell’s DNA. The level of hydrogen peroxide in the cells of autistic children was twice that found in non-autists. such high levels suggest the brains of autistic children are exposed to a lot of oxidative stress, something that would probably cause cumulative damage.

These results need to be taken with caution. First, ten is an extremely small sample. second, on the face of things, mitochondrial diseases appear far rarer than autism. They are diagnosed in fewer than six per 100,000 people in America, while autism of some sort is seen in as many as one in 110. Moreover, previous attempts to show a link have come up with a much weaker correlation between the two phenomena. a study of 69 autistic children that was published in 2005 found mitochondrial abnormalities in only five of them. that is higher than the background rate of mitochondrial disease, but nevertheless suggests that faulty mitochondria are not the only cause of autistic symptoms. This study did, however, use a broader sample of the autistic spectrum than Dr Giulivi’s, and looked at muscle cells, whose metabolic profiles are very different from nerve cells and lymphocytes.

It is also important to remember, in studies like this, that correlation is not causation. some third effect could be triggering both the symptoms of autism and the mitochondrial dysfunction. if it is really the mitochondria that are causing the problem, though, there is another hypothesis that needs to be addressed. This is that external triggers might expose such mitochondrial weaknesses earlier than would otherwise be the case.

In 2008 an American court awarded damages to a child after she developed health problems following routine childhood vaccinations. America’s Department of Health and Human Services looked into the child’s medical history and concluded that vaccines had significantly aggravated an underlying inherited mitochondrial disorder that predisposed her to metabolic problems that caused brain damage with features of autism.

The genetic condition in this particular case is rare: only four other examples are known. and no scientist—least of all Dr Giulivi—is suggesting that the new study bears on the question of environmental triggers of mitochondrial malfunction. But if faulty mitochondria do turn out to be a cause of autism, even if not in all cases, that question will have to be investigated. and you can bet your bottom dollar that somewhere out there is a lawyer wondering whether he can do just that.

Source: economist.com/node/17626864?story_id=17626864&fsrc=rss

Please share this news with friends, family and also with your contact list on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Related Posts