You spend 11 months and one week growing your hair out

… and in about five minutes it’s all on the floor at your hairdresser’s salon. After you told him you were trying to let your hair grow out. Grrrr! And he used the “thinning comb” (a razor inside a cage that looks sort of like a comb), so now instead of my hair being all one length (which it almost was), there’s a gajillion little layers that will have to grown out.  Double Grrr!

And he wonders why I don’t come see him more often, and yells at me when I trim my own hair. (At least I don’t cut buckets of it off when I do it myself.)

Does anyone out there have a hairdresser that actually listens to them? Ugh. I almost cancelled today and put it off for another two months. I wish I had. Sigh. At least all this healthy eating makes my hair and nails grow quickly.

Libya

You’d have to be living in a cave not to know about the changes that are happening in the middle east, and particularly the violence in Libya in response to the people demanding change. You know what’s coming next. I’m going to ask you to sign a petition if you would. It’s at Amnesty International calling for the U.S. and the U.N. to impose a total arms embargo on Libya and to send a mission there to stop the violence. And while they’re at it, can they send someone to Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana too?

I’ll say this:  it’s interesting to see the changes, exciting changes taking place in all these middle eastern countries… that we never bothered to invade. That’s the thing about democracy. It’s catching. You don’t need to force it down people’s throats. In time, they’ll demand it.

You can find the petition here.

Nitroglycerin Cream Increases BMD

A reader (thank you, Carol) posted a link to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association which says that nitroglycerin cream stimulates bone formation and inhibits bone resorption. I’m making it a separate post because I know not everyone reads all the comments.

Now, if you’re like me, when you hear nitroglycerin, you think of people using it to blow up safes… or in pill form for heart medication. But what is nitroglycerin cream and who uses it? More importantly, where can I get some?

Google had this to say:

Preventing chronic chest pain caused by heart disease. It also may be used for other conditions as determined by your doctor.

Nitroglycerin Ointment is a nitrate. It works by relaxing (widening) blood vessels. Chest pain occurs when the heart needs more oxygen than it can get. Relaxing blood vessels allows blood to flow more easily. This reduces the heart’s workload and the amount of oxygen needed by the heart.

So you need a prescription. Rats. The study has some pros and cons. In the pro category, it lasted a while. From 2004 to 2010. In the con category, it was a relatively small study, 243 women in all.

Results?

At 2 years, women randomized to the nitroglycerin group had significant increases in areal BMD at the lumbar spine (from 1.05 to 1.14 g/cm2 vs placebo from 1.06 to 1.08 g/cm2; percentage change, 6.7%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 5.2%-8.2%; P < .001); total hip (from 0.92 to 0.97 g/cm2 vs placebo from 0.93 to 0.92 g/cm2; 6.2%; 95% CI, 5.6%-7.0%; P < .001); and femoral neck (from 0.88 to 0.93 g/cm2 vs placebo from 0.87 to 0.86 g/cm2; 7.0%; 95% CI, 5.5%-8.5%; P < .001). At 2 years, nitroglycerin also increased volumetric trabecular BMD (11.9% and 8.5%), cortical thickness (13.9% and 24.6%), periosteal circumference (7.4% and 2.9%), polar section modulus (10.7% and 9.8%), and polar moment of inertia (7.3% and 14.5%) at the radius and tibia, respectively (all P < .001); and increased bone-specific alkaline phosphatase by 34.8% and decreased urine N -telopeptide by 54.0% (P < .001). Incidence of serious adverse events did not differ between nitroglycerin (5 [4.2%]) and placebo (5 [4.3%]) groups. Among those women who continued treatment for 24 months, headaches were reported by 40 (35%) in nitroglycerin and 6 (5.4%) in placebo groups during the first month, decreasing substantially after 12 months.

So a gain of 6.7% in the lumbar spine, 6.2% in the hip and 7% in the femoral neck; increased trabecular and cortical bone; increased bone-specific alkaline phosphatase and a decrease in N-telopeptide.

There were side effects. A lot. Our Pam Flores did an article on this same study over on HealthCentral.com.  Pam reported the following as some of the side effects.

• Severe low blood pressure with accompanying dizziness and lightheadedness
• Headaches
• Flushed skin
• Heavy sweating
• Nausea
• Worsening angina (chest pain)

More on the IOM Vitamin D Controversy

Pam Flores (a/k/a windblown), besides being a fellow BMD warrior, is a writer over on HealthCentral.com. As some of you may recall, a few months back the IOM (Institute of Medicine) released new recommendations for vitamin D and calcium intake. The vitamin D recommendations in particular set off an avalanche of discussions (and panic). People worried they’d been taking too much; people worried that their 57 or 65 ng/mL 25-hydroxy levels were too high; blah blah blah blah.

At the time, I said that I thought the IOM had erred on the side of caution; that the recommendations were for your average, healthy, non-osteoporotic bear and that I didn’t think those D recommendations were applicable to someone tiny, fluorescent-white, in a gray northern clime like me.

Well. Pam recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Bill Davis (of the HeartScanBlog and the Track Your Plaque movement.) I’m a fan of Dr. Davis because of his post about creating a do-it-yourself treatment for osteoporosis (which I’ve been following ever since.)

Anyway, salient quote from the vitamin D interview:

I … regard the IOM’s advice on vitamin D and calcium as just the sort of extremely conservative, one-size-fits-all analysis that such efforts tend to generate. Having addressed vitamin D issues in literally thousands of patients and witnessing the results, I will give as much weight to the IOM’s guidelines as I do to the FDA’s Food Pyramid advice on diet: I ignore their advice because I feel it is wrong and unnecessarily dogmatic and conservative.

As for calcium supplementation, Dr. Davis feels that once your circulating D levels are brought up to their desirable range, the intestinal absorption of calcium is doubled, meaning you may not need any additional calcium (in the form of a pill) at all. He says most of the research out there about calcium has been conducted without supplementing with any D, or if D was supplemented, it was usually with the less-effective D2, not D3. He thinks they need to go back to square one and study calcium supplementation after D3 has been restored. He also says he tells his patients not to supplement with more than 500 mg of calcium a day. Interesting.

The interview is fascinating, important, enlightening and timely. Dr. Davis says so many things that make so much sense. What I’ve quoted here is just the tip of the iceberg. Please everyone take a trip over to HealthCentral and read the whole thing.

Great article on a weight-lifting senior from AZ

NPR, though often (wrongly) excoriated for being too liberal, remains a source of really informative and inspiring stories. Like this one on how lifting weights allows seniors to build muscle (and bone). The subject of the interview, who is 73, began weight lifting 10 years ago after being diagnosed with osteoporosis.

Palais started going to the gym three days a week. It didn’t cost much, and student trainers were there to help. Within a year, she was able to compete in the local senior Olympics.

“My top score was 380 pounds: I squatted 135; I benched 80; and I deadlifted 165,” she says, laughing.

Now Palais has a drawer full of silver and gold medals.

You can read (or listen) to the full thing here.

Acid reflux? Try sleeping on your left side instead

There’s a small article in The New York Times today that links sleeping position with various ailments, acid reflux being one of them. Since the over the counter remedies for acid reflux have been linked to bone loss, if there’s a way a person could control the stuff without the meds, that’d be a good thing. The article says you tend to have more acid reflux symptoms if you sleep on your right side. Those with heart congestive issues, however, are advised against sleeping on their left side (and, in fact, naturally seem to avoid doing so. The enlarged heart makes it uncomfortable for them to sleep on their left side.) More on the acid reflux sleep position here.

Good Grains

There’s more to life than white rice (or brown rice, for that matter). Martha Rose Shulman has an article on tasty grains that you may not yet have tried, and novel ways to cook them if you have tried them. Considering this article that says eating lots of fiber is good for you, a grain-filled breakfast (with some fruit) might be just the ticket.

Again, these links are to The New York Times. As yet, they are not charging for their website. If you can’t read the article, simply create a username and password, and the (journalistic) world will be yours.

Faking a smile is bad for you

… and evidently only makes you more unhappy than you were before you pretended to be happy. It’s even more pronounced for women than for men. Probably because women spend a lot of time trying to be happy (or appear happy) for someone else’s sake.  You can read it here.

I am so glad…

… that I no longer live in Alabama. It is nice to visit. But after a week, I’m about ready to lose my mind. I have bitten my tongue so long and so often, I think there may be a permanent dent.

And my stepmother just described her new neighbor as a jig-a-boo. In public.

It’s like we’re still living in the dark ages. Yet everyone is a “Christian.”

A “Christian” who hurls racial slurs with no more consideration than if they were asking someone to pass the salt. The crap that I have had to put up with this trip from that woman. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I escaped the house for a couple of hours last night and went to my stepsister’s house. And thankfully, my stepsister enumerated her mother’s many manipulative, petty ills so that I didn’t have to. We ordered a pizza and bonded over our mutual dislike of her mother. And now my stepmother is angry with me for spending time with her daughter. There is no pleasing her.

Seriously. One day I will tell you the tale of my ignorant, evil step-monster… er… mother. But not now. (sigh) It is horrible to want to visit your elderly dad, but know you’re going to have to put up with nonstop B.S. if you do.  P.S. Pagebooks, you may have been right about my dad not having the financial security that I thought he had. Ugh.

New Dietary Guidelines

… published by the Departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services can be found here. Jane Brody’s article summarizing the guidelines can be found here. If you’re eating alkaline, you’re already following these guidelines.