Strong Bones for Life: Breaking Free from the Osteoporosis Myths

Hi, and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donny Wilson. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Debbie Robinson. She's a functional bone health expert and a certified yoga therapist. And I'm very excited for her to be here to break some myths about osteoporosis and bone loss and help you to feel confident about what you can do to build your bone, including using yoga for that purpose, which is not something we often hear about, but Debbie is an expert in yoga, and she's going to teach us about how we can use yoga to protect our bones and protect our health. Thank you so much, Debbie, for being here with us today.

Thanks for having me.

Of course. This is so awesome. And I really want everyone to understand, like, your experience with yoga and how that brought you to this focus of helping women with their bone health.

Okay. So I came into this. I started practicing yoga in my 30s, and then in my 40s, something happened to my hip, and it was an injury, and I tore my labrum. And so all of a sudden, my mind is going to my hip. It changed the way that I practice yoga. It turns out I had a surgery. That surgery collapsed my hip joint, and then I had a total hip replacement when I was 51 years old. So that experience of having to have a hip replacement, having surgeries on my bones, raising awareness to bones, I started studying with a doctor with osteoporosis in an osteoporosis way, because it was all bone related. Donnie. I don't even know if I had heard. I mean, I probably had heard of osteoporosis before, but I was in my 40s, so you don't really think about bone health really in your 40s. But, yeah, my journey really began where my hip joint ended, where my collapsed hip joint ended, and there I kind of went into the bone space with all that.

Amazing. Because I hear this story, you know, patients go through this in my experience as well, where, you know, you're just, like, out of nowhere, you realize, oh, my gosh, my bones need attention. And let's talk about, you know, because the usual scenario is, like, with you, maybe you have a fracture or a surgery, and that's when you find out that your bones need attention or. Or maybe it's postmenopausal and you have a DEXA scan, and the doctor says, oh, my gosh, you've got some bone loss happening. Let's talk through. What is that experience for women when they get that initial eye opening, scary information of, oh, my Gosh, your bones are in trouble.

Yeah, you're right. You know, it used to be DEXA scan, which is typically recommended at age 65, which is ridiculous. Well, what I'm noticing now is women are going in there, maybe falling or fracturing or having surgery without a fracture on a bone. And the orthopedic surgery, surgeons are noticing something in the texture of their bones telling them to get DEXA scans. And women are finding out earlier and earlier. And that diagnosis, Donnie, that moment something happens inside of you, you go from maybe not even thinking about your bones to a complete place of fear and fragility. And it's really indescribable the way that I either say you get the rug pulled out from under you or I say you walk into that office and. And for all you know, your bones are like the bricks of a castle. Like, if you go to Scotland and you see these castles that have lived for centuries.

Right.

Our bones are so strong.

Right.

The strongest part of us. The minute you get a diagnosis of osteoporosirosteopenia, you feel like your bones are made out of sand. In your stone castle becomes a sandcastle. It is a deep, deep fear and feeling of fragility.

Absolutely. Women explain this to me. And oftentimes in the doctor's office, they don't explain what the results mean or even what the options are beyond a medication. So let's talk about that. Like, what is your perspective on the standard treatment protocols for, let's say, osteopenia and osteoporosis, or bone loss in general?

Well, we have a broken system and we've been misguided and misinformed and misled since the 1990s. And it all happened. And because a company had a drug that got approved in 1995, Fosamax, a company had an X ray machine to look at the bone density. And in 1997, Medicare approved that scan and there was the Pill. And so really, since the 1990s, we've been in this framework of scan, diagnose and treat and treat has to do with pills. Doctors are not educated on what it takes to build strong, fracture resistant bones. They know nothing other. Very little training on diet, exercise, stress management, management, and all the lifestyle pieces. But the big thing, Donnie, is that we probably. We were thinking that osteoporosis is a progressive, degenerative disease, and as you get older, your bones get weaker. That is not the truth. The truth is it's an inflammatory metabolic disease, which means lifestyle is going to be the drivers of the Root causes of bone loss.

And that's just, like, mind blowing. And so I want to go have you say that again and even go into more detail, what does that mean and what the difference is? Because it, you know, we think of osteoporosis is when, you know, you see someone who's, you know, let's say maybe even over 80 years old, and they are now hunched over in their posture. And so I think that's what immediately comes to people's mind. And they're like, wait a minute, I'm only in my 50s or 60s. What the heck? You know, how did this happen? And so to be able to. And to be. And to be told, oh, there's nothing you can do about this, or all you can do is take this medication. But the medication has a lot of side effects. And. And it's. It's not even that effective. And you can. Can't take it forever. Right. There's a lot of limitations to the other biz, you know, Fosamax and the other bisphosphonates or medications that are used for bone loss.

Yeah. And it is the only tool in the toolbox, and women don't want it. It's the number one decline medication are osteoporosis meds. And we are learning more about the negative side effects. You could get osteonecrosis of your jaw. Your jaw will break, just shatter, and the dentist won't even want to work on you. If you've been on a bisphosphonate, you could get what are called atypical spontaneous femur fractures. And I asked an orthopedic surgeon once, like, how do you know that it was a medication? And he said, you could tell because it's an atypical fracture, the way that it breaks. And so the thing is, is what I would like people to understand is that our bones are our foundation. They're a reservoir of minerals. And throughout our lives, usually up until about our 30s, we are building, building, building, building, building. And after that point that there is a remodeling process of building and breaking down, you know, it has to remodel. You have to get rid of old, dead tissue so new tissue can lay down about age 30. In the 30s is when that shifts. And now there's more breakdown than buildup. And then at menopause, when we lose hormones, it even accelerates more. The thing that we're understanding now, or that I'm going to definitely help us understand and bring more to the forefront many contributing factors to bone loss. And it's not just as you age, you don't want to become the hunchback old lady at 80. So if you raise your awareness to what are the lifestyles, what are the factors that lead to bone loss, then you can actually stop those. And this is such new information because we could stop bone loss, we could reverse bone loss, we could reverse osteoporosis. And that is not something that was discussed, let's say. Well, I've been discussing it since 2022, but let's just say that people in this field really were not saying that you weren't getting doctors. Well, you. Yeah, you were. A lot of them were just not wanting to say that.

Yeah, I agree. And I mean, I've been helping women with osteoporosis and bone loss since I've been in practice, since the year 2000. And so I completely agree with you. I've seen it before my eyes. I've seen patients who been working with me for over 20 years, and we've been able to see their. Their bone loss on their DEXA scan, go from osteoporosis range to healthy range. So it just shows not only can we prevent bone loss, but we can reverse bone loss like you're saying. So I just want everyone listening to know that that's actually possible, even if you're not hearing it from your doctor's office. Just like Debbie saying, your doctor's office is probably not going to say that to you because they're not educated in how to do it. It's going to involve not a medication, but some diet and lifestyle changes and some supplements. But it actually is possible, and I've seen it before my eyes in my patients, and it's really been so amazing and so cool. Before we go into more of that, in terms of understanding how gut health is related to the bones and so on, I just wanted to clarify for anyone who has maybe you haven't had a DEXA, or if you have had a dexa, how to understand those results a little bit? And Debbie, you mentioned that now Medicare will pay for Dexa at 65. But when, when do you think really should women get a dexa? And at what age should they really would they optimally have a DEXA scan? If it is way to do it.

I mean, so I think that there's more awareness now, Donnie, and you can potentially get one. My gynecologist ran one on me when I was 50. I'm so grateful she did that. That's what we call a baseline. So pre menopausal going into menopause is when the greatest dec of bone density usually occurs. And so if you could get one right around that time, it would be great. Or anyone who's going through any kind of cancer treatment and they're taking medications that could contribute to bone loss. The other thing is chronic gut issues. And if you're on a PPI or protein pump inhibitor, that would also be something. Or glucocorticoids. So certain medications can contribute to bone loss. So if somebody had a disease state that they were managing with medications that would lead to bone loss, or if you could get a baseline right when you're getting ready to go through menopause around that 50 year old time frame. So that's when I would ask for one. And not to complicate things, Donnie, but there's actually a better technology and ultrasound, not as readily available, not covered by insurance, but it's called rems, Radio frequency echographic Multispectometry. And it's an ultrasound. But I would recommend that women either look for that or they ask their doctor if they could get their gynecologist if they can get a dexa. And I would try to do that around when you're going to menopause.

Thank you. And when you ask for the report. Right. So once you do it, ask them, ask the doctor to send you the report. And one of my quick ways to explain the breakdown of a DEXA scan is, you know, basically healthy bones are at a zero or plus higher than zero. And when you start having bone loss, you're going into the negative. So you're going to see a negative. If you have bone loss, you're going to see a negative like negative 0.5 or negative 1 or negative 2.5. And that's telling us, you know, sort of the, the degree of bone loss is the, the deeper you go into, into the negative. And they're going to especially focus on the hip and the spine because there's different bone types in the hip and the spine. So you'll, when you go, when you get your DXA report, you're looking for how's my hips, how's my spine? And how far in the negative am I? Maybe Debbie can fill us in even a little more how you explain that?

Yeah, part of it, they look at the spine because it's really all they can look at. They look at lumbar 1 through 4 and actually most of the spinal fractures, which is where most of the fractures in osteoporosis occur, is in the spine, are up Higher in the rib cage, like below the heart to right around the belly button. Below the belly button. But we look at the four vertebra of the lumbar spine and then we look at the hip joint and the hip and pelvic fracture areas. What we really want to avoid, you know, I would say for listeners in the 50s, 60s, even 40s, when even younger, honestly raising awareness to the fact that we can actually build strong, fracture resistant bones, that we can stop bone loss. That is, number one, to focus on thinking about your bones when you're taking care of yourself. But then the, you know, getting a DEXA scan, not getting too scared about this crazy statistics of what can happen when you're 80, but getting a DEXA scan for a baseline. And in terms of those numbers, numbers, most people are going to be in the negatives because the zero line is you at age 30. And if you're not 30 anymore, you're probably not going to look like 30 inside. You know, Donnie, as we age, we, we notice what happens to our body, right? We have wrinkles on the outside. Well, there are also wrinkles on the inside. And bone loss is some of that. So you're mostly going to be in the negatives. Once you get above what's called negative 2.5, that's when you go into this category of osteoporosis. When you're below that 2.4 and below, you're going to be osteopenia. Just to know, though, I don't hang my hat on a DEXA scan. Just to know though, that you have a control over all of it is what I think I really want the messaging to be that you can control all of that.

Amazing. Absolutely. So then whatever, don't be. Just know your number and then say, hey, that's my starting point. Now what am I going to do about it? And one of the things that you really focus on is this relationship between gut health and the bones. And I really want to dig into this because I think it could be really surprising for people to realize, wait a minute, what does my gut have anything to do with my bones? So please help us understand. Why is it that you emphasize your digestion and your gut health when it comes to improving your bone health?

The thing that builds our bones are the foods that we eat. We need protein, vitamins and minerals like that. Those are the building blocks of bone tissue. The bones store minerals and so we need those things to come in our body. But it's not. We are not what we eat. We are what we Absorb. So the food that comes in, it needs to get from mouth to bone. And that, that journey, you have to go from the mouth to the stomach to the small intestines into the body, goes through the liver, and then it gets delivered wherever it needs to go. And your body needs to manage any toxins that come in. It needs to manage waste products. And so this whole entire flow system from mouth to anus matters because we bring in the nutrients, it comes into our body, it goes to where it needs to go, and then we need to eliminate what our body no longer needs, any waste products. We pee, poop, sweat, and breathe things out of our body. So the gut is where all that absorption takes place. Like right after the stomach, the small intestines is where 80 to 90% of absorption takes place. So we need to make sure we are digesting, we are absorbing. And then we need to make sure that that barrier, I call it our fortress, you know, I refer to castle Bones, right? Castle stone bones, Castle sandcastle bones. We have a fortress. We have a barrier, just like a castle has a fort around it for protection. We have this lining, which is one cell and two layers of mucus. And that fortress has to be intact, because if it doesn't, that's that we. We hear that 80% of our immune system is in our gut. Well, the reason why is because that's where your outside world can become your inside world. So you've got your soldiers, your immune system, waiting to see what's coming in, what's coming in. If you don't have a really nice barrier, then you're going to let things come in. And osteoporosis is a disease of inflammation, and that's where most of those triggers of inflammation will occur, which is why we have to pay such critical attention to gut health, for bone health.

And I. Sounds like you're referring to leaky gut, right? This leaky gut situation. And so if we can understand leaky gut, identify that. And I always say it's not if we have leaky gut. It's a matter of how severe is the leaky gut. Is it mild, moderate, or severe? Because the more severe the leaky gut, the higher the inflammation is going to be. Is that what you also talk about in that area?

Yeah.

And you just said it's not if it's what it's, it's how severe. And it's true, because we've been bombarded by things that will affect that barrier. And until you understand what are all the things that affect the barrier, then you don't know that. And there's certain foods that can affect that barrier. There are the protection of that barrier are. Is our microbiome that we, you know, the bacterial balance inside of our. Our gut. Those bacteria. The bacteria are what actually creates that double mucus layer and supports that fortress. If you are not optimized in your microbiome, which is a big part of that is d. We need to feed them. There's prebiotic fibers that they eat. And so we need to have the right food. We need to actually be digesting the food that comes out of our stomach and make sure nothing gets in that way, which aging can have a role there. We lose our digestive capacity. If you are not managing stress and you're eating in a stress position, state your body won't fully or properly digest. And if you don't, and the food that comes out of the stomach into the small intestines, if it's not in the right format, it's not the right food to feed those protection bacteria. So it really is, as you said, not if I have leaky gut. Most of us do because we've been exposed to toxins, to stress. Maybe we're not eating the right diet that's going to support that protection and that food base for those microbes. And we have to understand that, that there's this whole role of balance that needs to take place for health and in my world, for bone health.

And a lot of times what I find that people feel surprised about is that sometimes you don't even have any gut symptoms. Like definitely say someone's having GERD and maybe even been taking a ppi or maybe they're having gas and bloating, or they know they have an inflammatory bowel disease. Then it's really obvious, okay, we gotta go address the gut. But what I see is even 50% of people have no gut symptoms, and still we need to be paying attention to their gut. Do you find that as well? Yeah.

And what's really funny about that is all, you know, we do questionnaires, right? Do you have gas bloating? Do you have excessive food cravings? Do you have acid reflux after you eat? How's your energy? Do you have brain fog? Are you pooping every day, first thing in the morning, if you are, or do you have diarrhea or do you have weak nails? Is your hair falling out? You have skin conditions, like all of these things that we would ask somebody, and maybe somebody doesn't have that many of them. And I find that I Work with a population that's very naturally minded, so they think they're doing all the right things. And that's the thing. Right, right things. So they think they're doing all the right things. And then you'll say, okay, we're going to start working on a gut healing protocol. And one of them, food is one of the biggest contributors to disease. So we start with an anti inflammatory diet and then some supplementation and whatever else we're doing some gut lining repair. And then they'll notice, wow, my sleep is better or my poop is better, or wow, my hands don't hurt anymore. They didn't even know their hands hurt. They didn't even realize that they had the symptoms that they have. They were desensitized or living with things that they didn't realize were things they didn't have to live with.

And so sometimes finding out that your bones need attention is like an opportunity to pivot your whole health and improve your whole health. Like, it's amazing to me how like, here you are, you might have the focus of, I'm going to improve my bones and you end up preventing heart disease, diabetes, dementia, cancer. Right, you're preventing all these other things because you're helping your whole health.

Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing. The bones are foundational. They're in the center of our body and they are the reservoir of minerals. And those minerals that the bones, the bones are one of the first organ systems to respond to stress. So when we get in a stressed out state and all that biochemical reaction is taking place inside of us that we've got to get to, to safety. Your bones are what helps you move. And inside of the bones is, are the minerals that are going to run the show. They contain some of the nutrients your body needs to do all of those physiological reactions to the stress response. And that doesn't just mean that you have crazy stress going on, Donnie. That means you just heard something, someone said, you just smelled something that triggered something that happened. When you were five, you just, just listen to something or watch something that was stimulating. And it could even be the way that person just looked at you. You know, you walk into a room, maybe you have some insecurity or, or, you know, you're a little bit cautious walking somewhere and something happens and you're like, wait, what did I say? You know, that gut reaction. The bones are responding and your bones are going to dissolve the minerals they store in order to do whatever it is your body needs to do. So, yes, take care of Your bones, you're going to be taking care of everything else in your life.

And the tricky thing is we are under stress all the time as humans and we just kind of like dismiss it as like, well, there's nothing I can do about it. What am I going to do? And we're so overwhelmed by it, we don't even know where to begin. And we certainly aren't realizing because we can't see our bones until we have something like a DEXA scan. So we don't realize that they're being affected. So I'm so glad you're opening our eyes and saying, wait a minute. If you're under constant stress, you better be starting to do something about that because your bones are likely being impacted. Even though you can't see it or feel it yet. You may, you don't even want to get to that point where you have a fracture. We want to prevent that. And, and if you do know that you have bone loss, then absolutely it's time to start looking at stress. And this. I would love to turn our conversation into talking more about yoga because in my book, the master of stress, reset your health book, I talk about my stress recovery protocol, helping people to recover from stress, including optimizing cortisol and gut health and neurotransmitters. And I go through a whole plan how to do that. And part of that plan includes what I refer to as recovery activities as well as exercise. And the cool thing about yoga is it fits both of those categories. It can help us with stress recovery and with, in movement and exercise. And I know that you have been practicing yoga and specializing in yoga for all these years. So I want to help have you explain to us, you know, because a lot of times when people hear about bone health, they think about, we hear about weight bearing exercise and they might think about walking or running or, you know, these kind of, or lifting weights. But I want to hear your perspective on why is it that yoga, how is it that yoga can help with our bones that maybe we didn't realize?

You know, I think that it's misunderstood. I think when it came here, it came here as an exercise. It required tremendous flexibility. Whenever I tell someone I teach yoga, they should come take yoga, they say to me, I'm not flexible. And what I say to them is, yoga doesn't require physical flexibility, it requires mental flexibility.

That's a good one.

Yoga is not actually a work out. Yoga is a work in the word yoga means to yoke the body, the mind and the soul. It's you, you and you. It's all parts of you. And we live so disconnected. So when we hear about bone health and we hear about we got to do heavy weights, we got to do heavy weights because we need to develop strength. We need stronger muscles, which leads to stronger bones. But I would suggest that there's actually four main areas we should focus on when it comes to bone health. We should focus on strength. Yes, Bigger, stronger muscles are going to lead to bigger, stronger bones. We need posture because half of all the fractures in osteoporosis are in the spine. We need to stand up straight, and we need the muscles in the back of our body to be strong, to hold us upright. And we need to lengthen the front of the body muscles, because we sit all the time and they're contracted, pulling us forward and raising our awareness to that. So we need strength, we need posture, we need flexibility, because we need to be bendable and not breakable. And so if you are going to misstep on something and your ankle joint is going to move or your foot's going to move, you need your ankle joint to be able to receive that. You need your ankles to be limber so that if they do bend a little bit, it's not going to pull in the bones and fracture them. If you are walking and your leg slips out from under you on a banana peel, you need your legs to be able to take that wide range of motion and those muscles that attach your legs to your body, that precarious hip complex area. You need the dance in your hips, you need that play and that range of motion so when you pull on it, you don't break it. And then we need balance for fall prevention, because bones don't break because they're fragile. They break because we fall. So balance, flexibility, posture and strength. Yoga from a physical perspective works on all of that. And if you practice yoga the way yoga was intended, it's not a workout, it's a work in. Then in that moment, you are matching breath with movement. You are staying right here, right now. There is no stimulation of cortisol, which is the biggest bone dissolving hormone in the body, the stress hormone. You are right here, right now, staying in the moment, working on strength, flexibility, posture and balance. So to me, yoga is the best thing when it comes to bone health.

Having optimal cortisol and adrenaline levels is essential for health and longevity. And yet the stress in the present and in the past can affect our cortisol and adrenaline levels, causing them to be too high or too low. The thing is that we're not all affected by stress in the same way. So over the past two decades, I've been researching and discovering how to help my patients recover from stress. And I've identified of five stress types which are the five common patterns of disruption in cortisol and adrenaline levels.

The reason why this is so important.

Is because the treatment is different. When cortisol is too high, we use different herbs, nutrients and other modalities to bring levels back to optimal than if the levels are too low. So that's why I, through research, developed the stress type quiz, which allows you in under two minutes to discover what likely your cortisol and adrenaline levels are. So then you can make decisions about which herbs, nutrients and other healing activities to choose to help optimize your cortisol and adrenaline again and improve your health now and into the future. Just go to stress type cross quiz.com where you can take the quiz and take it from there.

Oh, thank you so much for explaining that. It makes so much sense. It gives me goosebumps. I'm like, wow, like it's, it's so perfect and yet we, we don't hear about it enough when it comes to bone health. So I'm so glad that you're teaching and you're guiding when you, when someone's thinking, okay, I want to do some yoga, what do you suggest? How, how best to find a yoga teacher or class that's going to be best fit for them so they have a good experience with it.

So I do say this, and I probably should say it a lot more. I have a hip replacement because a yoga teacher tore my hip when I was 44 years old. He pushed my body and he tore my hip joint. And it has changed the course of my life. So for me, you don't want another person to be moving your body, to be adjusting your body. You want to develop that interoception, that inner body awareness so you know how to move your body efficiently and effectively. If you're going to work with someone, it should be with someone that knows your body. If you're an aging female, if you're in menopause, then work with somebody that's also in that category and understands your body type. And especially if you have osteoporosis, make sure you work with somebody that is skilled in that. And if you don't have access to a class, I mean, I do a lot of stuff online, so there's no reason why somebody can't find somebody skilled that it works with yoga. And one other thing I want to say, Donnie, is I'm a yoga therapist and a yoga. So to become a yoga teacher, it's a 200 hour certification and a lot of people are yoga teachers. To become a yoga therapist, it is a 1000 hour clinical training. After that you are trained by chiropractic physical therapists, MDs, ND's nurses. We're trained in clinical conditions so that we can understand how to, to use the practice or to not use, but to take the practice of YOG and specialize it for hypertension, for cancer, for fibromyalgia. And we learn about conditions and what would be the restrictions, limitations or counterindications for somebody with that condition. And so a yoga therapist does a thousand hours of training and then they go through a clinical rotation at the end. So if you actually could find a yoga therapist, then you have an even higher level of skill set and especially a lot of knowledge of anatomy. And you're going to need that if you have osteoporosis for somebody understands especially the spine and what you should and shouldn't do when it comes to spinal movements.

Oh, thank you for explaining that. I didn't realize the difference. And it definitely sounds like if you're with, with dealing with osteoporosis, working with a yoga therapist is going to be someone who's much more educated and able to support you so that you can be more confident that you're not going to get injured in the process, like with any type of, of exercise or any activity. You want to be working with someone who's, who has that knowledge to guide you so that you get the benefit and not any risk. And so I love that you're mentioning that you do online support and I know you have your Healthy Gut Healthy Bones online program as well. So I want to make sure everyone knows like, and I'll be sharing for sure in the, in the podcast notes as well that you have your podcast and you have your online programs and tell us more like what is it that you, if people are, they're like, I want to learn more from Debbie how to save my bones and save my body at the same time. What, what, what are you offering through your services?

Yeah, so I do, I have so many ways. I mean my, my podcast, Stronger Bones Lifestyle that you've been on. Donnie Stronger Bones Lifestyle, because for years I ran functional labs on women with osteoporosis helping them stop reverse bone loss. And I really found that, that we, it's a, it's a multi pronged approach. It is lifestyle. It's what eat, how we think and how we move every day. That's either building or dissolving our bones. And that's the term I use, building or dissolving. Building or dissolving. And you learn what are the bone building habits? What are the bone dissolving habits? So Stronger Bones lifestyles name in my podcast. Lots of amazing speakers on there and it's. We always come back to the bones when, when I'm doing interviews and I have a community low that so that's free podcast I and I have YouTube channel, Debbie Rob and some wellness free. I have over 700 videos on there. A lot of yoga therapy sessions that I taught during the time when I couldn't teach live and then Stronger Bones Lifestyle community. It's a really low ticket, $27 a month. That's my community. I do lives in there. Q and A in there. I'm also a chef Donnie. I went to professional cooking school. So I do cooking classes for bone health and gut health and optimizing digestion. So Stronger Bones lifestyle is a really low cost community because that's like a great entry level and you're going to learn a ton. I've got recordings in there, my pot, some of my podcasts are in there. And then I have a program called Healthy Gut, Healthy Bones, which is my foundational program on learning how to change your lifestyle, focusing on optimizing gut health to optimize bone health.

I love it. It's so valuable and so helpful and especially for people to know that they, they can access all of this online. You don't have because it's really hard to find someone often in your local area who has this knowledge or has this information and so to know, hey, you can, you can come to Debbie and start learning from her. And, and, and this is a process, right? It's not like you're not. This is not something we're looking for an overnight change. This is something where we're looking for change over time, over months, over years. How do you talk about that for people? How to get the right mindset about how to create change for your bone health?

Well, you need your bones, right? You need your bones. And if you raise awareness and learn, are you building or dissolving? Building or dissolving and that we are build. They're living tissue, constantly remodeling all day, every day. And that's beautiful because that means we can actually do something about it. You don't want to end up at age 80. I mean the statistics, one out of two women will fracture a bone in her lifetime. Every 30 seconds, I believe worldwide, someone is falling and fracturing a bone. And if someone does fall and fracture a bone, actually closer to the 80 year old time frame, there's a 50% chance that a year later you won't be here. I mean it can be deadly. So it's a horrible quality of life if that happens to you. So just even I hate to do the scarce statistics, but to be honest, Donnie, my body was broken at age 50, my hip joint was collapsed at age 50. So I was stopped in my tracks, which is why I'm so adamant to do what I do now and to share this information. But we, our bones are constantly remodeling. And so this isn't something let me do a program for one week, let me do a program for one month. It's let me learn the lifestyle that's going to build bones and not dissolve them. And that's why everything I do is called lifestyle. And so it's the way you eat, how you think and how you move. So you're going to learn what are the foods that contribute to bone dissolving? What are the foods that contribute to bone building? And from now on, for the rest of your life, you want your bones to be building, not dissolving. You want them to be strong. So you make the best food choices with that information. You have to move your body. Move it, use it or lose it. You want to become bendable and not breakable. So you do that and you do whatever movement pieces. And it's not go to the gym for an hour every day. It's do push ups, do a plank, go up against the wall and push away from the wall. Practice getting up and down from a seat or from the toilet every day. The most functional way in your joints. So I like to teach what can I do every day that that's working on, on my bones? Not just go to the gym, go to a yoga class and then that what you do your work. Master stress. Stress is the biggest bone dissolver of all. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone that when it's secreted in your body is going to break down everything. And your bones are one of the first things that get broken down when you're under stress. So you've got to manage stress because you can't eat your way or move your way out of bone loss if you are not managing your stress.

So important and so good. And I'm curious if, if you could share with us, like, what are maybe one or two of the most shocking bone dissolving foods out there? Like, what do you see that people are eating that they had no idea was working against their bones?

Gluten is probably the number one, because gluten negatively affects thyroid, which is a master metabolizing hormone. And you need the metabolism. Osteoporosis is an inflammatory metabolic disease. It also affects your, one of the secretions of the bile, which breaks down fat soluble vitamins. You need vitamin D and vitamin K. And it contributes to leaky gut in almost all of us. It's hybridized, it's sprayed with glyphosate. There's just a lot of reasons that gluten is like off the table. And okay, 80, 20 or 90, 10. Right. You're, you're not, you don't have to be 100% dairy, because dairy is inflammatory. There's two proteins that are inflammatory. There's a growth factor in dairy. That's not healthy for us. We're not really sure. It's pretty inflammatory. And women are eating their dairy for their protein and calcium. And we don't need as much calcium as we've been misled to believe we do. We don't need 1200 milligrams. We probably need around 7 or 800. And you can get it in your food. It's in everything. It's a structural mineral, sugar. Sugar is inflammatory, so we don't want that. And then there's some other things. You know, there's limit coffee or limit caffeine and alcohol. And there's some other things. Corn, non organic soy. But really the truly, the big ones are sugar, dairy and calcium. I mean, sorry, sugar, dairy and gluten.

Gluten is like, I think people will be surprised about dairy because we were taught, you know, I remember from a young age all these advertisements, oh, you've got to drink your milk for your bones. So what, what happened there? What, why, why the disconnect? And I think that's going to take a little bit for people to go because people think automatically, my bones need help. I better go get some milk or I better go get some cottage cheese. Right? That's the way we've been taught the things.

Think.

Yeah, and, and, and, yeah, that's the thing. I mean, on my podcast, I interview so many functional MDs that they, you know, discuss that as well. And I think the more information we hear, the better there are. So I used to run functional labs. Stool. It's not stool, sorry. Food sensitivity. They were blood Labs. And it looked at immunoglobulins, it looked to IgG, IGA, IgM and IgE markers. And I would run what's called the dairy zoomer. So it was specifically looking at all the proteins and all the peptides of dairy. And I run them on Women 60 plus with osteoporosis or osteopenia 85% of the time. High reactivity. So this is not. Does it. This is. It's doing it. So that's like, you know, the proof right there. But the big. So there's two milk proteins that we are inflammatory to humans. Cow milk is for calves. We are the only mammals that drink milk after we're weaned. Cow milk is. Got calcium molecules to build calf bones. It's got an accelerated growth factor in there that is inflammatory to our immune system. So we're actually bringing in something that, you know, and I know it's a really hard one to break apart from Donnie. It really is, because.

Addictive to milk products.

Yeah, well, they're addictive, yes. I mean, I gave them up so long ago. They also contribute to mucus. So they're not great for mucus, if you have any kind of issues with mucus. The biggest point, though, is we don't need them. And I think we. I believe it was the Dairy association that had a very big role in establishing the RDA for calcium and the marketing. And so there's a doctor, functional medicine doctor, Dr. Mark Hyman, that went against the Dairy association or whoever put out. It was the Milk Board or something that put out, got milk and they had the milk mustaches. Right. So he went on, he did something and he said, got proof. And he actually made them take down their campaigns because he showed that it wasn't true. And the company. The countries with the highest dairy consumption have the highest fractures. If you look at Asia, Asia doesn't really consume a lot of cow milk. Dairy. They don't eat a lot of dairy. And a lot of those cultures are lactose intolerant. So they don't really have a lot of dairy. And there's plenty of people that have strong bones. We have some of the highest fracture risks here in this country. So you have to kind of look at all of this. I know it's hard for people to break apart. And if it is about the yummy factor, you could. There's plenty of yogurts and ice creams, if that's your thing, that are. That are. You know, there's alternatives. And I mean, I'll eat Cheese, you know, I eat cheese every now and then. It's not that I'm not 100%. You just have to, it's going to be contributing to inflammation and inflammation leads to bone loss and many other diseases.

Thank you for breaking that down. I think it's so important. I also have been gluten free, dairy free for decades and I and it, you know, again, like you're saying it's not, you know, sometimes now I'm able to have because I've done the leaky gut healing and my body's less reactive at the same time. When we come back to these numbers in this research and we go, wait a minute, certainly if someone's facing bone loss and they're wanting to recover their bones and reverse osteoporosis, then definitely don't fall for the myth that you need more milk. That's not a lack of milk that's causing that. And it's not even necessarily a lack of calcium. This was the other thing is a lot of times, you know, we heard like say it was maybe a decade or so ago, there was a lot of fear around calcium. People were worried, oh, calcium is going to go straight to my blood vessels. And so people, what I'm seeing is a lot of people end up avoiding calcium altogether because, and actually in some ways I agree because for a long time practitioners were recommending just the over the counter, really low quality calcium that wasn't even being absorbed very well, let alone getting to your blood vessels. And so I love that you're saying, hey, yes, we need calcium, but we need, we can get it from our food. We don't need far, anywhere near as much as they're saying in the rda. And but I, my point is always it's not just about calcium. We need the calcium with the vitamin D, the vitamin K, magnesium and other nutrients. So it's not just calcium by itself.

Exactly. And they all play a role. They're synergistic. It's like an orchestra. You can't just have the violin. It doesn't sound so beautiful without everything else. And yes, calcium 99 is stored in your bones. We need the vitamin D to get it absorbed. We need the magnesium to put the calcium into solution and we need the vitamin K to bring it into the bones. And then there's CO factors and we need amino acids and we need silica and we need manganese and Boron and B6 and we need a healthy gut to make sure that the food and or supplements, if you're taking supplements are being absorbed and utilized into your body, digested and absorbed and assimilated. So it's this whole entire process, it's this lifestyle. And the more you learn, the more you know and you know, it's just, it's just education. And we just were so wrong with bone health. We've been so misguided, so misled, so misinformed. It's been the whole entire machine, the patriarchal money driven machine since the 1990s that's controlled the narrative on this. And you don't need to spend a whole heck of a lot of money to do all these crazy things. You need to eat the right foods, manage your stress and move your body appropriately, focusing on strength, flexibility, posture and balance. And you don't have to spend crazy amounts of money on crazy things to have that happen.

What did you notice with your bones, Debbie, because you shared with us that you found out that you had bone loss loss in, in your early 50s. How are your bones looking now that you've been implementing all this?

Well, it was really interesting. So when I had a surgery that collapsed my hip joint four months later, they took part of my femur bone, the top of it off, and part of my pelvic bone, and my hip joint collapsed four months later. So for 17 months I thought I could repair myself, but because I was surgically altered in my hip joint, I couldn't. And so I was teaching eight yoga classes at the time. And when I came out of that surgery for the next two years, from one DEXA scan to the next, I demos demonstrated everything in my classes on my new hip replacement side because it had become so weak with 17 months of all of that pain and I was avoiding it and my right side did everything and my left side didn't. So I did everything on my left side in my classes, all my demonstrations. And then after two years, I had another DEXA scan and my bone density was negative 2.4 in my, in my hip, in my right hip, my natural hip, which is one point away from osteoporosis. And I was only 23. And so I realized, what am I doing? This is like my real hip. Why am I focusing on that fake hip? It doesn't need to be strong. It's not going to break. And if it does, I'll get a new one. So I started then for the next two years, for eight classes a week, doing everything on my right side, focusing on developing strength in that with my yoga, with all my different postures, loading down, bending and doing all the things I was doing and my DEXA scan changed from a negative 2.4to a negative 1.9, which is a very significant shift of. Of course, I was also running functional labs. I was eating the right things and supplementing correctly and not eating dairy sugar and gluten, minimizing my alcohol consumption. So, you know, I was doing the lifestyle people pieces too. And so, yeah, I hover now around that place and, you know, I've learned so much since then. I mean, that was, you know, my, I get so much deeper into my career and my mission and then I interview so many amazing people that just educate me even deeper. And then all the women I work with and I've taught thousands of thousands of people yoga since 2010. So I have experience every week with live people and their stories. And so I know it's possible my and others.

Oh, I'm so happy for you and I'm so grateful for you for what you do and for coming to share that with us here today. Is there anything else you'd like to share with with us at How Humans Heal before we wrap up?

Just know that you can heal. You know how humans heal. Humans heal when they decide to heal, when they do the things, learn the things that are healing. And there are so many things that can heal. And we have such a tremendous, tremendous inner healer inside of all of us. And when we learn how to support that healer with food, mindset, movement, all of the things we need to do, then our body heals itself.

And that's so beautiful to know that the bones can heal. I think that brings so much hope. So any of you who just recently gotten the news or maybe you've been sitting with this and stressing because then you're stressing about your bones and it only makes it harder for your bones. So now I'm hoping your stress about your bone results has gone down and you've built up your hope and your plan for how you can start to take even more action to actually recover your bones and while you do that, improve your whole health. Thank you so much for joining us today, Debbie.

Thank you. Thanks, Donnie. Nice, nice to be here.

Absolutely. And so glad that all of you been listening in. If you don't already, please subscribe to How Humans Heal so you don't miss the next episode. We'll see you soon. Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a.

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