Prepare to have your health questions answered here on Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions
with Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center in downtown Ventura.
Now, here's Dr. Todd.
Good afternoon.
I am Dr. Todd Binkley, board certified doctor of non-force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine.
Functional medicine means I use tests that most doctors don't order, usually because
your insurance doesn't want to pay for them, to identify conditions that they miss because
they don't order those tests.
And I really love doing what I do, helping people identify ways that they can heal themselves.
I just had the privilege of attending for the fifth year in a row this past weekend
a conference in San Francisco called Laboratory Endocrine and Neurotransmitter Symposium,
which was mostly about hormones and neurotransmitters as they affect the brain.
But it was especially focused on reversing, not just reducing or preventing, you have
to really start early to prevent cognitive decline.
But there was a lot of really exciting information, very new research showing that there are ways
to actually reverse cognitive decline, to reverse dementia, Alzheimer's, and all other
forms of dementia.
So we'll talk a little bit more about that if we have time and some great case studies.
But I'm going to start with a question that came in from a listener in Ventura.
Grace asked me to talk about the difference between osteoporosis and osteoarthritis and
the best ways to facilitate healing them with something natural as opposed to drugs.
She was especially concerned about the side effects of the common osteoporosis drugs that
you hear about, drugs like Fosamax, Actinel, Boniva, Prolia, Reclast, these are bisphosphonate
drugs and in my humble opinion almost no one should take these drugs.
As long as you seek out a better alternative of which there are many.
So the scary thing is you can go to the websites of these drugs, Fosamax, go to their website
and it says the mechanism of action is to, it clearly states the way these drugs work
is by shutting down osteoclasts.
What is an osteoclast?
There are two essential processes continually rebuilding and replacing old bone tissue.
You want this.
Every part of your body is constantly being broken down and replaced with new healthy
tissue.
That's how you stay alive.
So in bone it works with two types of cells, osteoblasts with a B which build new bone
and osteoclasts with a C which clear out old bone.
So these bisphosphonate drugs work by shutting down the function of osteoclasts so that they
can no longer clear away old bone which results in the osteoblasts just continually building
new bone over decrepit scaffolding that remains in your old bone cells.
Does that really sound like a good idea?
Obviously it is not.
Why do they do it then?
Well if those drugs will make your bone density scans look better because if you just stop
breaking down the old bone that really needs to be cleared away and just keep shoving in
more new bone it will make your bones more dense and it will make your dexa scan, your
bone density scan look better.
It will increase your bone density.
What it will not do is make your bones stronger.
What it will not do in many women is make you less likely to have a fracture.
These drugs even actually cause bone cell death.
It's documented.
You can look this up on PubMed.
These drugs are known.
One of the most common side effects is to actually cause bone necrosis, death of bone
cells, especially in the jaw but also in the hips where you need your bone strength the
most.
To make your bones just to look pretty on a test you need them to be strong.
And the way you make strong tissue anywhere in your body is to let the natural mechanisms
that have been there since you were born that are designed and know what they're doing to
do what they do best.
To heal and repair bone in particular you need to clear away the old bone before you
start replacing it with new bone.
You need both osteoclasts and osteoblasts to function.
That's the problem with these drugs.
So what do you do?
What is the natural safe effective natural solution to maintain healthy bone strength?
Well I've had lots of patients.
Hopefully we'll have time if we do I'll get to some case studies.
I'll describe some specific women who have reversed themselves from osteoporosis back
to osteopenia or low bone density even from low bone density to fully normal bone without
drugs.
So the most important natural nutrients you need for bone health obviously calcium everyone
knows that calcium is important.
The big problem with that is if you just go to Costco and buy a calcium supplement or
if you get a prescription for calcium from your doctor 99.99 percent of the time those
supplements are calcium carbonate which is ground up rocks and seashells.
And there's a reason that almost all calcium supplements are made from calcium carbonate.
It's cheap and penheaded physicians that think all nutrients are the same don't take the
time to learn that those nutrients that particular form of calcium is not very bioavailable and
it does not do a job do a very good job of helping maintain bone health.
So they just often recommend more of it.
A lot of physicians recommend 1200 1500 milligrams of calcium calcium carbonate for people who
have osteoporosis and this is just bad advice.
So you want a bioavailable form of calcium.
Ideally you want to get calcium from food like sesame seeds and spinach and any dark
green vegetable will be loaded with bioavailable spinach.
There is calcium in the ground.
There is calcium if you mine minerals from the surface of the earth and consume them
in a capsule your body will do its best to try to absorb them.
Women in third world countries who are minerally deficient famously sometimes eat dirt when
they're pregnant because they sense that they need something that they're not getting from
their food and that's just a sad situation.
But there are supplements that make available plant based like forms of calcium.
So if you stick a plant in that same dirt instead of eating the dirt or mining minerals
from sources of calcium like seashells and rocks you can put a plant in that same dirt
and it will absorb calcium through its roots and bind that calcium in the stems and leaves
and vegetables whatever that seeds whatever that type of plant that is it will be bound
up in food food that our bodies have recognized for thousands hundreds of thousands of years
and developed the ability to easily break down and absorb.
My favorite form of calcium for bone health and many other reasons for to supplement calcium
is a brand called reacted calcium by ortho molecular products.
This has four different forms of calcium in it that are like as close as you can get to
the plant based forms that most people don't get enough of from their diet.
So calcium is obvious it's really important to take good calcium if you look at your calcium
and it says calcium carbonate on it throw it away and get the reacted calcium from ortho
molecular products is not the only good one calcium lactate is also not a bad form.
There are several other forms email me if you have specific questions about this but
obviously you need calcium and most people obviously think about drinking milk when you're
young and growing drinking milk if you don't have lactose intolerance or sensitivity to
casein or any other problems with drinking milk if you're a young growing child or teenager
that might be fine evidence is sort of mixed on that but I do not recommend that most adults
drink cow's milk for a whole host of reasons that we don't have time for here today it's
much better to get calcium from green vegetables or take and or take a good calcium supplement
if you come to me and have a dextrose can with low bone density I'm going to recommend
that you take reacted calcium from ortho molecular products because I've given it to hundreds
of people and seen the results before and after that prove that it works it's not the
only one that works but I know that that one does work and you also need vitamin D and
vitamin K and sometimes collagen so let's talk about those other three nutrients vitamin
D keeps calcium in circulation so that it's available to be absorbed by your bones by
your muscles by other tissues lots of your tissues need calcium so vitamin D keeps good
calcium and circulation vitamin K especially the K2 form of vitamin K actually moves the
calcium from circulation and deposit helps your body deposit it into the tissue into
your bones where you need it most so you need good plant-like calcium you need vitamin D
to keep the calcium in circulation and you need vitamin K especially vitamin K2 to deposit
that calcium into your bones so many women also need collagen a lot of women actually
I find in my practice when they come in when I'm first doing an exam I find they're often
taking collagen because it also has wonderful effects on your skin hair and nails many people
take it just because it makes them look and feel better taking the most the high quality
collagen is also really important I for years I've been doing this type of work doing testing
getting actual data before and after whether nutrients work on my patients for about 20
years now I've been 30 years in practice as a non-force chiropractor and have been doing
functional medicine for about 20 of those years and for a lot of those years I didn't
recommend taking collagen supplements because they didn't seem to work when I tested people
that didn't seem to improve their bone density scans a lot of people found that they didn't
get the benefits of better skin hair nails that they were looking for so calcium are
collagen supplements have improved a lot in the last few years and especially with with
some of the the top shelf brands like designs for health the two I recommend and I've been
getting amazing reports back from many many many patients who take either collagen from
designs for health or orthomolecular products so those again are not the only ones that
work bone broth just consuming bone broth is a great natural source of collagen but a lot
of people don't like the taste and some of the previous powdered forms of supplemental
collagen also didn't taste very good so collagen from designs for health and orthomolecular
products works great that people are getting fantastic results with it and it has no taste
at all it just has a kind of a neutral taste and you just mix it with water you can even
put it in you know any other liquid you'd like so not everyone needs collagen to improve
their bone health but it's often part of the picture depending on how bad your tests are
you as you know if you've listened to my show at all before I'm my focus is always on testing
the problem with bone density testing is you have to wait two years what why do you have
to wait two years well because it takes two years to see a difference you know the best
time to redo any test is when you expect to see improvement or any change and so bone
density scans dexa scans bone mineral density tests you're not going to see a difference
if you do it before two years so whenever you and instigate a new protocol to improve
your bone density you have to you have to wait for two years but I've done that with
many many patients and most of the time just taking a good bioavailable calcium adequate
vitamin D which for most adults is 5,000 units a day and especially and often very high doses
of vitamin k2 makes all the difference sometimes you also need supplemental collagen I'm Dr.
Todd Binkley you're listening to safe effective natural solutions to almost any health challenge
I'm talking mostly about osteoporosis today I had a question from a caller who asked me
about the difference between osteoporosis and osteoarthritis so far I've only been talking
about osteoporosis I will get to the difference between those two before I do that I just
have to tell you how excited I am to have attended again for the fifth year in a row
this fantastic symposium I keep going because every year it's better than ever it's called
a laboratory endocrine and neurotransmitter symposium and one of the featured speakers
again this year was Pamela Smith MD and she had some interesting things to say about the
correlation with autoimmune disease and long COVID which I'm definitely going to come back
to later I'm preparing a lot of information on the latest research on what's causing long
COVID but we'll come back to that Pamela Smith MD spent her first 20 years in practice as
an ER physician at a level one trauma center in Detroit and she's an internationally known
speaker and author on anti-aging and personalized medicine she's been featured on CNN PBS and
many other television shows and radio shows focusing on anti-aging including awakening
from Alzheimer's and regaining your brain she's the author of 14 best-selling books
include including one I recommend everyone get any woman who's interested in understanding
their hormones better her her best her best the best selling of her many best-selling
books is called what you must know about women's hormones the second edition just came out
fairly recently so she says hormone replacement therapy in menopausal women has decreased
a lot in the last few years because concerns about increased risk of breast cancer and
heart disease and nearly all of these concerns are due to the fact that most hormone replacement
therapy administered by most doctors is synthetic hormones conjugated equine estrogen also known
as Premarin which is named for the fact that it's made from female horse urine taking estrogen
without progesterone can increase risk of cancer and many other conditions so synthetic
estrogen by itself is not the not the way to go and and because of that it is often
combined with progesterone but combining synthetic estrogen with synthetic progesterone can be
even worse so the combination of synthetic estrogen combined with syngetic progesterone
which is really progestin it's not even progesterone synthetic progesterone is progestin and drugs
like prem pro and activella are examples of these combinations of synthetic estrogen and
syngetic synthetic progesterone and they have documented damaging effects on DNA especially
the progestin which makes it carcinogenic so nearly half of women quit taking synthetic
hormone replacement therapy after a year because of the side effects and synthetic hormones
this is doc going back quoting dr smith here synthetic hormones waste energy by giving
incomplete messages to our cells which then fail to produce a balanced hormonal response
so i'm mentioning all of this because yes after taking bioavailable calcium adequate
vitamin d high doses usually of vitamin k2 and sometimes supplemental collagen a lot
of women actually are suffering from bone loss because of inadequate hormones especially
estrogen so the only way to know for sure if that's you or if someone you love needs
hormone replacement therapy for bone health or a whole host of other symptoms then there
is a safe effective natural solution for that as well and it is taking plant like plant
based bioidentical hormones instead of the synthetic hormones that most women get and
this is often a critical part of the picture for women that are osteoporosis have osteoporosis
and it's not getting better with whatever else they're doing if you or someone you
love is feeling the classic effects of estrogen deficiency postmenopausal or during the transition
even if you're just starting to feel the early signs of menopause it might be perfectly safe
for you to take plant-based forms of bioidentical estrogen at very low doses so the problem
with conventional hormone replacement therapy is not only that they use synthetic hormones
most of the time but also that they give you way too much because they're only testing
your hormones in serum so often very low doses can dramatically reduce the symptoms of hot
flashes and night sweats or cold flashes or dryness vaginal dryness discomfort during
sex dry skin dry eyes dry mouth mood swings mild depression irritability or urinary urgency
feeling the need to pee immediately trouble sleeping these are everybody you know these
are very common symptoms and they're relieved by synthetic hormone replacement therapy but
it's not worth the side effects especially when there is an alternative and so the most
important way to know whether or not you have safe if it's safe for you to take hormones
to say for example you have a family history of breast cancer or even if you've had breast
cancer before it may still be safe for you to take very low doses of estrogen and or
progesterone the way to know that is to not do a blood test i talk about blood tests all
the time they are the gold standard for most things but for hormones especially if you
want to treat them with physiological levels meaning low doses that have profound effects
then it's important instead of a blood test to test your hormones with saliva the salivary
glands have a robust capillary bed surrounding them which is the smallest form of blood vessels
your saliva comes from your blood so your salivary glands are surrounded by a huge number
of tiny little capillaries and things anything that's in your blood will leak in to your
saliva which makes it a good testing medium the equipment to test hormones in saliva has
to be a hundred times more sensitive than the equipment to test hormones in blood which
makes these tests very accurate but more importantly the best way to if you want to do low doses
the safe low doses of plant-based natural hormones of bioidentical hormone therapy then
it makes no sense to test whether or not you're getting adequate amounts what you always have
to do you have to test continually you have to tack and you have to adjust your hormones
you start with a reasonable dose and then you have to test again to make sure that's
working and that will always change as your body responds to the therapy you're taking
but you want to test with saliva tests instead of serum tests especially if you're doing
a trans dermal hormone therapy so there are lots of oral hormone therapies but the best
ones to do if you want to do a safe effective plant-based solution are trans dermal something
you put on your skin when you put hormones on your skin they bind to red blood cells
your red blood cells deliver them directly to tissues throughout your body where they
are needed like your bones and your heart and your brain and several other your uterus
everywhere you need that estrogen to function normally again it's delivered directly from
the surface of your red blood cells and then there then they disappear they're taken up
by those cells so that's why they don't show up adequately accurately on a serum test when
you get your blood tests done for most things you're really mostly most of the time testing
blood serum not red blood cells they remove the red blood cells and test your serum for
most things there are lots of exceptions to that but the point is it works much better
to test your hormones with a saliva test administer trans dermal creams or oils directly to your
skin in very low doses safe doses that do not increase your risk of cancer for most
women and see the profound effects in reducing all of those horrible symptoms a lot of women
start perimenopause in their 30s and almost always by the time they reach 50 but it you
know it varies a lot but it is totally safe to get tested and start very low doses of
replacement hormones for the ones that your body has stopped making on its own and then
test again to make sure that you're maintaining safe physio normal physiological levels of
these things and you can with if you do that if you do the proper testing then you have
very low risk of increasing your risk of cancer maybe even reduce it and definitely this is
what the latest research shows that no one most people have not heard about yet most
doctors even have not heard about yet it actually read is well documented to reduce your risk
of cardiovascular disease you actually reduce your risk of heart attack or stroke by maintaining
adequate physiologic not maximum overdoses like most endocrinologists do with women with
synthetic hormones but maintaining normal low but adequate physiologic doses of especially
estrogen and progesterone and they prevent all the horrible symptoms the hot flashes
the night sweats the dryness and the trouble sleeping the mood swings and irritability
but restoring normal levels of hormones can also prevent memory loss improve heart health
and of course maintain adequate bone production prevent osteoporosis sometimes even reverse
it where does the time go i still haven't talked about osteoarthritis so the difference
between osteoporosis and osteoarthritis is osteoporosis is a disease of the bones osteoarthritis
is a disease of joints the best way i promise i will talk about the best ways to prevent
osteoarthritis of the joints on another show have a fabulous weekend you've been listening
to safe effective natural solutions with dr.
todd binkley if you have a health question you want discussed on the show email your
health questions to dr. binkley at binkley healing center dot com take advantage of this
opportunity to ask questions for yourself and for your loved ones because our health
matters join him next friday at four p.m. for safe effective natural solutions right
here on 98.3 the word kdar