Cure Your Osteoporosis for 15 Cents a Day

January 13, 2020

ReferencesBuilding Bone VitalityOsteoporosis InternationalJ Zoo Wild MedNatureAZCentralJehle J Clin Endo MetaMoseley J Bone Min Res.,


The unspoken scourge of advanced western civilization is osteoporosis. It leads to broken bones and broken lives. Break a hip and you are not going to escape a nursing home over 30% of the time. But this is new to modern civilization. Skeletons from before civilization don't have osteoporosis. At age 65 the number one risk of premature morbidity and mortality is a broken bone. Women in America break their bones at 10-100 times the rate of women in poorer countries. One in 8 Caucasian women in America will break a hip. Men do 1 in 20. Horrible! And that doesn't count wrists, shoulders, backs, ankles..... 


There is a huge industry trying to fix this with expensive, sometimes toxic drugs. Is all that necessary? Well, no! 
Fixing osteoporosis isn’t all that hard if you put your mind to it. You have to understand simple chemistry that I can explain in 500 words. Here goes. 


All animals that eat plants get tons and tons of potassium and magnesium salts and digest it out with alkaline urines. The biological ash of vegetables is alkali. Gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos (our biological cousins) have alkaline urine. pH 8.5 is mildly alkaline. Hunter-gatherers, who eat the majority of their calories from plants have alkaline urine. If you eat nothing but plants (no cheese, no milk, no yogurt, no fish) you can get your urine to be alkaline too. And if you read the wonderful review of all 550+ studies done to date in Building Bone Vitality by Amy Joy Lanou, Ph.D. you will come to the conclusion that eating an alkaline diet, aka plant-based, leads to stronger bones, the more alkali you eat. 


How does that relate to osteoporosis? Humans started getting a bigger brain about 5 million years ago and started standing up, hunting animals and eating more animal foods. The energy density of animal is higher than plant, so we were able to thrive and develop an even a bigger brain. Over the past five million years, we even evolved the umami taste preference on our tongues that guides us to really like animal protein and seek it. That has served us well, as long as we die before age 45, the end of our reproductive years. Nature isn’t much interested in you if you live past 45, and before 1900, we didn’t. In just the last 100 years, we have started living much longer. We have gotten much wealthier and the industrial revolution has provided us with much more animal foods. We get over 50% of our calories today from animal. 


Here is the rub. Animal protein has many more amino acids with sulfur in them. That sulfur turns into sulfuric acid type compounds, that ends up acidifying you and being excreted in your urine. You digest food in your stomach, but really break it down in your liver and then have acid compounds that are excreted in your urine. The result of that is that in America today, just about everyone has a urinary pH of 5.5, modestly acidic. That is because we get over 50% of our calories from animal, which is strongly acid. 


To get to your urine, these compounds have to pass through your blood. The problem with that is that you can’t change your blood pH because our breathing depends on it. But we have an elaborate system of buffers in our blood that soften the change of that extra acid by shifting their ratios, mostly of CO2 and HCO3 (bicarbonate). Your bones understand those buffers and can see the ratio. They want to help out because they are sitting on the body's reservoir of carbonate. “You processing some acid? We can help out and help neutralize that. Have some carbonate and get those ratios back in sync.” Your bones give up some carbonate and calcium comes along with it. 

It’s that simple. Eat animal protein, lose carbonate from your bone. For every gram of animal protein you eat, you lose 1 mg of calcium. The more milk you drink, the worse your bones. Did you get that? Those ads with a lip covered with white milk is not brought to you by science. It’s an ad paid for by the milk board. Taking calcium doesn’t work either because it doesn’t change the engine driving the change. 
Ok, now read this. You are not at all powerless. You can alkalize yourself and stop the leaching out of calcium. You can become a pure vegan, get alkaline urine to prove your purity. That will work. Or, more intriguing and much more fun, you can cheat a little and alkalize yourself pretty easily.

Potassium citrate is an alkalizing agent. The citrate part of it is basically three bicarbs hooked together. Take 2 grams of potassium citrate, about 20 meq of bicarb results and in one hour your urine will be upped from pH 5.5 (because you had eggs for breakfast) to 8.0. Each 1 gram potassium citrate capsule is the equivalent of 3 servings of vegetables. Its effect lasts about 8 hours. 

What happens if you take 6 a day, two with each meal. Your urine stays alkaline all day long. Your blood is ever so slightly alkaline, enough to shift your buffers back to their natural state, building bone. You should still eat more vegetables. If you are good enough at eating vegetables, you. may not need 6 grams a day, you may. only need 2, or 4. But you can have some cheese or pate with all its attendant acid and have a life. You get to keep your friends.

Is there published literature to support it? You bet! Read Jehle's article from 2013. Or Moseley
I've been pushing this for several years now and I've had multiple people come back with DEXA scans showing improvement. 


Another problem. The drug potassium citrate as a prescription costs about $ 2.60 a pill and you need 4-9 a day to get the full effect. But!!! You can make them yourself for 3 cents each. If you eat 6 a day it will cost you 15 cents a day and your urinary pH will be 8 and you have turned off the engine that is driving your osteoporosis. Where do you get the potassium citrate and pills from? I have them in my office or can look them up on Amazon. Swanson has the best capsule maker and it's not on Amazon.


WWW: What will work for me. This idea of alkali has me intrigued. That is our natural, human state. It's only been a couple of hundred years that we have swerved our natural food towards much more acid. Our clever pharmaceutical industry has discovered all sorts of expensive and potentially toxic drugs to soothe your osteoporosis (and have your jaw rot, your femur snap and your wallet empty). Much, much better is stop the calcium, cut down on cheese, meat, eggs, milk, and yogurt and eat more asparagus and broccoli. And take potassium citrate capsules you make yourself.


Pop Quiz

  1. Why do you get osteoporosis? Answer: Easy. Your bones are trying to be helpful by sharing some of their carbonate to neutralize all the acid you eat. Eat an alkaline diet, no osteoporosis.
  2. Where does the acid come from? Answer: All animal-sourced foods may be great for protein but terrible for too many sulfur-containing amino acids that get processed into sulfuric acid. No problem as long as you die by age 45.
  3. Is there a formula I can use to understand the acid to alkali ratio of food? Answer: You bet. One 3 oz serving of meat equals 3 servings of vegetables. One 1 ounce of cheese equals 6 servings of vegetables. One slice of bread takes one serving of vegetables. Do the math. One Big Mac takes 21 servings of vegetables to neutralize its acid.
  4. Will my doctor prescribe potassium citrate for me? Answer: no. Potassium citrate is approved by the FDA to dissolve kidney stones only.
  5. What is the value of my doing it myself? Answer: With some practice, you can make 1000 capsules in one football game, paying yourself 900 dollars an hour for so doing. It may take longer if your team fumbles 3 times and you upset your table and have to vacuum the carpet.

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