Dear Healthy Friend,

Osteopenia is defined as a mild thinning of the bone mass, although not as severe as osteoporosis. Osteopenia results when the formation of bone isn't enough to offset normal bone loss (bone lysis).

Right, now that you know what it means to you... Keep reading to find out what osteopenia means to a large pharmaceutical company...

In the name of good health,

Taryn Strugnell
Managing Editor of Nutrition & Healing

P.S. There are no bones about it... And that's what today's Health Bytes is all about... Their conditions, their treatments and their preventions...

Your bones are worth billions...
Jenny Thompson
Director, Health Sciences Institute

Your doctor breaks the bad news: You have osteopenia. In other words, your gradual loss of bone mineral density has begun to outpace natural bone formation.

Next, your doctor will explain that osteopenia isn't necessarily serious, but it does mean that osteoporosis dangers are looming.

Then, with the fear factor in place, he'll probably recommend a drug to keep osteopenia from escalating into full blown osteoporosis.

If this happens to you, you need to know that you shouldn't take a controversial drug to treat a normal condition that's been ingeniously marketed as a dangerous "disorder".

In 1992, World Health Organisation researchers dreamed up the word osteopenia (literally: Bone poverty) to define diminished bone density. Just about everyone experiences bone density loss as a natural part of ageing. So you may have perfectly healthy bones, but just not quite as dense at 45 as they were at 35. That's osteopenia.

Here's how a drug manufacturer turned osteopenia into a "billion-dollar baby" in four easy steps...

STEP ONE: Change the system to fit the drug.

In 1995, the FDA approved the pharamceutical company's osteoporosis drug. But this "breakthrough" wasn't a blockbuster at first because there was a little diagnostic problem.

At the time, the only method to measure bone density in the spine and hips (the critical osteoporosis points) required cumbersome and expensive equipment. Screening was difficult and costly to the patient, so women weren't getting screened in large numbers.

Another technique used "peripheral machines" to measure bone density in a finger or a wrist. These machines were smaller and less expensive - an obvious plus. But measurements of peripheral bones don't reveal what's going on in the spine and hips. Bone loss in one part of the skeleton isn't necessarily the same in another part.

That critical detail didn't bother the company's officials. They launched a campaign to widely promote the use of peripheral machines which could be easily, and much less expensively, used in doctors' offices. This gave a boost to the number of people screened, a huge boost to the number of diagnosed osteoporosis cases, and an equally huge boost to their drug sales.

STEP TWO: Get some help from friends in Congress.

Want to REALLY improve your business? Throw a ton of money at Congress.

Intensive lobbying efforts by the manufacturer paid off in 1997 with the Bone Mass Measurement Act. Under this act, bone scans were covered by medical aids. So they got another triple boost: More screenings, more osteoporosis cases, more drug sales.

STEP THREE: Get some help from friends at the FDA.

1997 was a big year for the pharmaceutical giant. In addition to purchasing the boost from Congress, they developed a low-dose pill and got the FDA to approve this "new" pill as a treatment for a condition that requires no treatment at all: Osteopenia.

Doctors played right along and now, 13 years later, this well-known, and other osteoporosis drugs, are regularly prescribed for osteopenia.

STEP FOUR: Get more help from those FDA buddies.

Earlier this year, FDA officials announced that they could find no evidence that bisphosphonate drugs increase risk of femur fractures just below the hip joint. That same month, two studies showed that long-term use of this class of drugs absolutely does appear to increase fracture risk.

Is this a disaster in the making for the drug manufacturer? Not quite. After a brilliant marketing run of well over a decade, the company's luck held out beyond the date when the patent for their drug expired in 2008.

Company wins. Patients lose.

Except those, like us, who realise that marketing campaigns aren't medicine.

So tell your friends to just say no to drug therapy for osteopenia.

For more info on underground treatments click here!

Multiple approaches to fighting rheumatoid arthritis

Q: I've been trying to research treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, but am just getting overwhelmed. Can you help steer me in the right direction?

Dr. Wright: I've observed improvement in every case of rheumatoid arthritis with elimination and desensitisation of food allergies. Milk and dairy are almost always major allergens in people with this form of arthritis and have even been the subject of mainstream medical research into RA (which showed that eliminating milk and dairy worked to alleviate symptoms). But even though dairy is usually a primary culprit, there are always multiple allergens aggravating rheumatoid arthritis.

Find and work with a doctor skilled and knowledgeable in food allergies as well as nutritional medicine. To find a doctor in your area, contact the South African Society for Integrated Medicine (SASIM) on (021) 887-5364 or lucia@integrativemedicine.co.za.

But while food allergy elimination and desensitisation improve rheumatoid arthritis, sometimes dramatically and always noticeably, it doesn't cure the problem.

Over the years, multiple studies have also reported a high incidence of stomach malfunction (specifically, low levels of hydrochloric acid and pepsin) in individuals with rheumatoid arthritis. These reports also revealed that just replacing the "missing" hydrochloric acid and pepsin - without making any other changes - could significantly improve many cases of rheumatoid arthritis.

So with this in mind, I always ask individuals suffering from rheumatoid arthritis to have a gastric analysis done. In the majority of instances, the test discloses low stomach function (low acid).

If this is the case for you, consider supplementing with either betaine hydrochloride-pepsin or glutamic-acid hydrochloride-pepsin before meals.

I usually recommend starting out by taking one capsule (5, 7.5 or 10 grains). After two or three days, if there are no problems, use two capsules in the early part of the meal; then, several days later, increase the amount to three capsules. The dose is gradually increased in this steplike fashion until it equals 40 to 70 grains per meal.

You'll probably need to work with a doctor on this aspect of rheumatoid arthritis, too. On rare occasion treatment with hydrochloric acid can be dangerous, so it should only be used when testing indicates a need. Though problems occur rarely, they can be bad.

Hydrochloric acid should never be used at the same time as aspirin or any other anti-inflammatory medication. These medications themselves can cause stomach bleeding and ulcers, so using hydrochloric acid with them increases the risk.

And last, but not least, many research studies have shown that the anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids contained in fish oil significantly reduce the inflammation and pain of rheumatoid arthritis. Generally, I recommend taking 1 tablespoonful of cod liver oil with 400I.U. of vitamin E (as mixed tocopherols) twice daily.