Detect Osteoporosis & Osteopenia Early, with Kevin Ellis @BoneCoach

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Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing five Journeys podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo. Ed's with me today. He's not always with me, so savor the moment, folks. And guess what? We have Kevin Ellis on our show today. He's one of my favorite people. He is better known as the Bone Coach. He's a Forbes featured Integrative health coach, podcaster, YouTuber, and he's also of the founder of bonecoach.com, which he founded us after an osteoporosis diagnosis in his 30s, which, by the way, men don't get osteoporosis in their 30s. Just.

Just for the listener, they don't get osteoporosis very often. Yeah, we need to hear this.

We'll come back to this. And. And that was really the impetus for understanding how challenging it is for the average human to get the ways towards stronger bones and prevention and resolution of osteoporosis. So I'm going to skip to the punchline and let you all know that he reversed his osteopor and has subsequently done it with thousands of people. So, Kevin, welcome. What a pleasure to have you here.

Thanks so much for having me here. This is. This is going to be great. I'm looking forward to it.

It's a lot of fun.

We had a great interview during our summit for those that missed it. Yeah.

And you can go back and look at it. Drtalks.com I don't know the rest of the link, actually. I don't know the rest of the link, but we'll find it.

It's there.

Yeah. All right. So what is osteoporosis?

Well, osteoporosis, I mean, it. It's something that you had just mentioned. Not too many people know that much about, especially if you're a male or younger male. But, you know, you're probably going to learn more about it if you're in your 50s, your 60s, your 70s, and you're a female. And osteoporosis literally means porous bone. And it's a condition that's characterized by either not enough bone formation, excessive bone loss, or it's a combination of both of those things. And in osteoporosis, both your bone density and your bone quality are reduced, and that increases your risk of fracture. And that is, you know, as people age, I think that's one of the biggest concerns most people have is their aging is they may have seen, like, their mother or their grandmother or some kind of progression, or they had a fracture and that significantly altered the course of their life from, from there forward. So preventing fractures, understanding your, your bone density, where it's at, and maybe some proactive and preventative things you now is just really, really important.

Let's make sure, just for our listeners, what is the difference? What is osteopenia then? Osteoporosis is porous bones. What's osteopenia?

Osteopenia is like a precursor to osteoporosis. It's all. It would also be called low bone mass is what I would prefer to call it, but like, you might get a diagnosis from a physician of osteopenia. The way that is going to be determined is through what's called a bone density scan. So somebody goes and gets this scan and you may have to request this scan because it's probably not going to be done until you're 65 unless you request it. But it's very low levels of radiation. You lay down on the machine, it does a scan, it tells you your bone mineral density, which is the actual mineral content of your bone, and then it generates a score. A score of plus 1 or minus 1 is considered normal and healthy. Minus 1 to minus 2.5 is considered osteopenia, which is a precursor to osteoporosis. Minus 2.5 and lower, minus 2.6, minus 2.7, so on and so forth. That's considered osteoporosis. And the greater that negative number becomes, the more severe the osteoporosis. And I, I always encourage people get a baseline earlier, right? Get a baseline earlier in life. See where you're at. Because you, it could be that you also didn't build up enough bone in your younger years. You may not have reached peak bone mass. 90 of your bone mass is put on by the time you turn age 18. By the time you turn 30, that remaining 10% approximately fills in. So if, when you were younger you had poor diet, nutrition, if you drank a lot of sugary soft drinks or.

Ate to that, of course, right? We have a perfect diet and exercise when we're 20s.

So, yeah, no, I think or the majority of us ate, ate some candy. You know, I grew up in the Midwest where macaroni is a vegetable. So, you know, like, so is pizza, right?

Because there's tomato on it. And actually, did you, have you heard this, Kevin, that that ketchup for some kids is the vegetable they get? And I'm like, ketchup is not a vegetable. Ketchup is a sauce.

And ketchup A lot of times contains a ton of sugar too.

Yes, but that's for a lot of kids. Their only vegetable. And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.

No, no, no. Yeah, we got to do more. We got to do more than that.

So hold on. So ketchup is not bone building. Let's just be clear.

We gotta be really.

Yeah, we gotta expand beyond the ketchup. So we gotta expand beyond ketchup. So the other things in a childhood, in terms of diet, nutrition, again, if you're eating, you know, candy and sugary soft drink, or drinking sugary soft drinks and all that stuff, that can be a contributor. But also if you're just not getting the nutrients you need, calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, vitamin K at a younger age, and when you're trying to build that foundation, it's going to be really challenging for you to build and reach peak bone mass if you are not exercising.

And you're leading for one second because, because you brought a really good point that I want to emphasize, which is vitamin D. Because everybody now is afraid of the sun and put their son, afraid to put their kids in the sun. So everybody's either covered up, doesn't go outside, or uses sunscreen, all of which prevent vitamin D. So majority of people, in fact, well, 99% don't get their vitamin D and they're low on vitamin D. So the thought that when you're younger you would get your vitamin D, it's just, that's an errand thought.

Do you remember when we were studying for the ifm, the boards, when we took our functional medicine boards, I was like, we learned about vitamin D and you know, you think about, okay, yeah, whatever, it's, it's good for, it's good for bones, but it regulates the tight junctions in the gut as well as supports the immune system. So what I know we're going to.

Talk about celiac and insulin also, and.

Insulin, but I know we're going to talk about celiac. And so because that's part of the story. And, and, and so when you're looking at how are you building bone, if you have higher insulin of zonulin, you have higher leaky gut, you have the, on early onset or the beginnings of the blunting of your villi, and you're not absorbing your minerals and nutrients, you might need more even to flood the system.

So you get what you need are genetic polymorphism.

Are we telling my story again?

It's all only about you.

It is a lot about you, but.

It'S not only about you, like, oh, I.

If you have vitamin D, snp, you also need to double your vitamin D intake. So I'm sorry we left. I just really want to emphasize that because I think that gets really lost in people's like, oh, I go outside and with a hat and long sleeves and sunscreen. If you have sunscreen, you don't get any vitamin D. Right. And just for full disclaimer, you may want to put on the sunscreen during the summer from like 11 to 3. But in the morning or in the afternoon, you really want to get out in the sun. Make sure you get your natural vitamin D. Because it's not just vitamin D. You get, you get other things that you can't get through the pill. All right, I'm sorry, do you remember where he was?

Because I've lost the plot.

No, yeah, I know. And I know exercise in terms of vitamin D. Also, like for kids, a lot of times you're right, people like vitamin D is in terms of sunlight. It's one of our best sources of vitamin D. But if you're slathering your kids with chemical laden sunscreens or you put those long shirts on them, you know, that cover everything up with the hoods all day long, you don't let them get any sun on their skin. That's not a good thing. So how can we get them some sun exposure where it's, you know, they're getting enough before they're burning and then at the point that they might be gonna get red, then you put a little bit of zinc oxide sunscreen or something like a natural mineral based sunscreen on them after that. But get a little bit of that sun first, that's going to be helpful. But yeah, the nutrient piece is super important when kids are young, but also the exercise piece. So if you led a sedentary lifestyle when you were younger and you weren't playing sports, you weren't working out or doing gymnastics or, you know, anything that had had you doing these short, sharp, dynamic movements in different directions to really stimulate that bone growth, then that could be a contributing factor. Also, if you had an eating disorder, if you took certain medications like glucocorticoid, prednisone, for example, if you, the all of those, if you smoked or drank excessively, okay, hand up. You know, I was in the Marine Corps for a while and I, there was one point in my life where I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. This was on deployment when I was in a really stressful environment. But there was one Point where that was part of my. Part of my history. And then outside of deployments, there was, you know, drinking a lot of alcohol in short periods of time.

So.

And, But I know that is with a lot of people. A lot of times people are. They might be drinking alcohol excessively. That can be a contributing factor too. So all of those things can prevent you from achieving peak bone mass before you turn 30. And if you still continue on and carry on with those things in your later years, all the things I just talked about, then that can be a contributing factor. Current day in active bone loss.

I want to add in the athletes, female athletes who are exercising so much that they suppress their cycles of their menstrual cycles because they're suppressing the estrogen, the spikes of estrogen and progesterone. So that's another category that I want to make sure the listeners are present to. Like the kids who exercise so much or run so much that the period suppressed. That's another huge risk for osteoporosis.

Right. And I. The other thing I want to emphasize what Kevin was saying. I, I talk about bones as muscles. If you're. You got to exercise them or they waste away.

Use it or lose it. Use it or lose it.

Literally the same principle. If you're not stressing, if you're not moving, you're going to lose it.

This is the only place where stress is good. Right? You're stressing your bones and your muscles, but you're not stressed overstressing.

All right, back to you.

So you. Do you. Do you do a baseline at some point.

So I don't know about you, but I usually recommend women do it at least 50 years old. That's generally, I'm like, are you female?

Do you breathe? Do you have any risk for bone loss? Let's do a bone density.

Yeah, but. So I like the cold, even if it's not like. I think it would be good just for general, even men, men or women, 30s or 40s, to get a baseline, understand where you're at. So that way, later on in life, it's not necessarily just this surprise, right? That, oh, my gosh, osteoporosis, it must mean that I'm losing bone right now like this. Something is right now contributing to that. That's not always the case. Right? Because when you get a bone density scan, it's a snapshot in time. This is your bone density right now. What it's not telling you is it's usually not telling you your bone quality. So your bone quality is or when you get a bone density scan, it tells you your bone density, the actual mineral content of your bone. What it's not telling you is your bone quality most of the time, which is the structural integrity, the micro architecture, how that bone is organized. Those two things combine, they create bone strength. So a lot of times people only have part of the picture. There is an add on software that you can get called TBS Trabecular Bone Score that can help fill in that quality part of the picture. There's also technology called rems, a newer technology called REMS that is radio frequency echographic multispectometry technology and that looks at your, it's like an ultrasound technology. It looks at your bone density and your bone quality and gives you a five year major risk for osteoporotic fracture. Like a fragility score. Basically. There are those tools to look at.

Your bone quality in addition to.

Yeah, how do you order that? Is that, is that something we can order?

So there are only certain clinics in the country right now. So Europe, it's already more widely adopted. The REMS technology is already more widely adopted in Europe. Not surprising. And it's been a slower adoption here in the us but there are some clinics out there that have this newer technology. And then in terms of the TBS trabecular bone score, you just have to ask ahead of time, call the facility ahead of time, hey, do you have this add on software to DEXA called tbs? If they say yes, then you just want to confirm with the technician when you get there that that facility actually has it and that, that they're going to do it, do that with your scan. But the other thing that it doesn't, a bone density scan is not telling you, is not telling you if you're still actively losing bone right now, present day. So that is where bone turnover markers come in and that is where you can look at the activity level of cells that are breaking down and building up your bones. So one of them, the most sensitive marker for bone resorption, resorption is just another word for bone breakdown, is, is the ctx, serum ctx. It's a blood test, the CT low peptide test. And that test looks at the activity level of cells that are breaking down your bone. And if that activity level is elevated or even really high, that can be an indicator of active bone loss and a root cause issue that needs to be addressed.

So, all right, I don't want to put you on the spot because I don't know if this is where your expertise is or not, but I actually. So I order and telopeptide in the urine.

Yep. You do urine or blood?

Do both usually.

Yeah. So there's the blood NTX also. Right. But then urine would be the preferred for the NTX too. So an ntx, if you do the ntx, getting it as the. The first catch of the day, it would be the best in terms of the urine first thing in the morning. And you're getting these labs fasted too, because especially with the bone turnover markers, they can be influenced by diet, by time of day, things like that.

Right. So what is the difference between the CTX and the ntx? I've seen it, but. And if. And again, if this is not your expertise, I apologize. I just.

Yeah, no, no, no. So ntx, they're both bone. Bone resorption markers. So they're looking at the activity level of cells that are breaking down bone. The biggest differences between the two are the. That NTX is still. It's just. You're doing it in a different form. Right. So CTX is one, NTX is the other. I would say the preferred forms of the CTX would be the blood. Preferred form for the NTX would be the urine.

Okay, that's useful.

That is very useful.

Yeah.

And then. Yeah, then the other thing too is that that looks at the bone resorption or breakdown side of the picture, but what it's not looking at is the other side of the picture, which is formation. So if you're looking at one side, you want to look at the other side. So the most sensitive marker for bone formation is P1NP Pro collagen, type 1N terminal pro peptide. Sometimes it shows up a little bit differently, like, depending on which labs you're looking at. But that's the other part of the picture. It's a blood test. And that test is. It's looking. It's directly looking at the activity of the osteoblast, the cells that are building your bone.

I love that. This. I mean, I'm assuming this is a standard LabCorp quest lab that you don't have to see a functional medicine doctor to say your doctor, could you please order these tests on me? It's. This does not necessarily. I mean, of course you should see a functional medicine doctor, but you don't need to for this.

Well, what I. I mean, what I like about these podcasts, I get to learn.

I know.

So I actually had no idea about this one. The antilo and C peptide, I've heard, but not the P1NP.

P1NP. So there are a couple, there are, there are a couple for bone formation, right? So P1NP Pro collagen, type 1N terminal pro peptide. That's a mouthful, by the way. That's the most sensitive marker for bone formation. That's directly reflecting the activity of the osteoblast, the cells that build bone. There's another one called osteocalc, which a lot more people are familiar with. Osteocalcin, this is a protein that's produced by the osteoblast that's important for activating bone mineralization and binding calcium to the bone matrix. So osteocalcin is also another one that we can look at in the blood. But then there's also bone specific alkaline phosphatase. So when you go get a comprehensive metabolic panel, the cmp, and in that you have your alkaline phosphatase, there are different fractions within that. So there's, you know, you can tell if that is elevated, what the elevation is coming from. You can explore that further. And there is bone specific alkaline phosphatase and that is detecting early signs of osteoblast activity. And this would be an important one to have if a person also has high or elevated serum calcium too. Because you're, you're looking at like bone cancer or something like that potentially. But that can be another indicator of what's going on in your bones. And then outside of just bone turnover markers, there's another one you can look at. You look at 24 hour urine calcium, right? And this is, it's not a bone turnover marker test and it's not looking at the activity level, those cells that are building up and breaking down bone, but it is looking at calcium. And the primary mineral constituent of your bones is calcium. So if you are losing a lot of calcium through your urine, that could also be an indicator of active bone loss. So there, there are lots of tests that you can do to look at what's going on inside your body. Those are some helpful ones.

So just to be clear, for the primary ones, the entelopeptide, the ctelopeptide, the P1NP, are you using the standard levels or you have a much shorter range? Because a lot of times in functional medicine we don't like, we don't like the average. We like optimal.

Yeah, yeah. Because the ranges, especially, let's say even on ctx, right. The range is pretty wide. I don't know, from a couple hundred to like eleven hundred or something is like the standard range. It's pretty. It's pretty significant if somebody's up at like a 700, 800, 900, 1100 CTX. And it's not an error on the test. There can be errors. Right. And it's not an error on the test. That could be an indicator that there's something contributing to bone loss. Right then. But if it's on the lower end, you know, and you've got like a 200 or 300 CTX or something like that, that's probably an indicator that there's not. Or that there's. There's lower bone turnover, not a lot of bone loss that's happening, or that. That you would have a stable result. But then you would also look at. You would also look at bone formation, too, and what those numbers are telling you also. But that's like, that's a very general example when you look at everybody's picture. There is some nuance there too, which would be really hard to kind of get into just in this discussion.

So how did you figure out you had osteoporosis? Like, what was the. What. What came first? What. Which chicken? Which egg? Like, where'd you start?

It was not. That was not the first thing that came up. Right. So after I got out of the Marine Corps, I. I started having all these different health issues. I had high stress, poor sleep. I know I had a ton of toxin exposure when I was in the Marine Corps, no doubt, but on some of the deployments, like I was on a combat outpost that we had a burn pit that for basically the whole deployment just was sweeping over our entire thing. And then also when the dust storms would come in and you don' face covered and you breathe all that. That dirt and dust and sand in and then it settles in your lungs, right? That's just another way of bringing those toxins in and then, not to mention smoking for extended periods of time. When I was younger, one of my first, like, my first job was on a farm where I was learning some good work ethic and working hard. And then I worked in. I actually worked in a car wash for two years. And I had chemicals from this tunnel. Like, there's, you know how those. They got the big tunnels with chemicals, and I would just stand down there in shorts and. And a T shirt and I had chemicals from that tunnel for years. Years, just landing on my skin, breathing it in. I'm, you know, cancer was always a big concern for me. And as I think back about some of the exposures I've had, you know, that was. It's always been a concern, but I'm sure those things contributed. And then after, again, I got out of the Marine Corps, I was, I had really poor sleep. I started having chronic digestive issues, too. I had low energy. Some days I could barely even get out of bed. And to go from somebody who's like this tough Marine, leading patrols, you know, thinking I'm invincible to barely being able to roll out of bed in the morning, it was just a horrible experience. I, I, I felt like less, like all I wanted to do was provide and be adequate and, you know, I felt like less of a man. And it really had an impact on my psyche, too. And it was at that point that I went and I got diagnosed with celiac disease. And I was malabsorbing nutrients for many, many years. I'm sure everybody listening, you know, Wendy, because you're celiac, you know, they're intimately familiar with what that is. But you know, your, your villi, when you ingest gluten or proteins that mimic gluten, they get blunted, they get damaged, they can't absorb the nutrients. Your body still needs those nutrients to execute its daily functions. Where is it going to go to get them? It's going to go to your largest reserve of minerals that you have, which are your bones. And that's what was happening to me, just pulling these nutrients from my bones. Calcium being the primary mineral constituent, but also your bones are this collagen protein matrix upon which minerals are laid. And when your body is pulling out these nutrients, it's not just pulling out the calcium. It's not like selectively saying, let me just take the calcium out, is tearing down that protein structure to release those minerals and nutrients. So with that comes bone loss. So I had multiple physicians that I had seen after, after, and nobody, after I was diagnosed with celiac disease, none of them said, hey, has anybody done a bone density scan? Until I found a, it was like a physician's assistant on one of my last appointments, and they're like, hey, is anybody done bone density scan? And I was like, no, again thinking, my bones are going to be fine. And sure enough, they came back. They didn't even call me. They just sent me a letter in the mail and said, hey, you have osteoporosis. Go on a gluten free diet. That was the extent of it.

Wait, wait, you already had celiac though, right?

I already had celiac. That was the, that was the treatment plan, was go on a gluten free diet.

Come on, Ken.

And that cured everything, right?

I. I remember opening this letter. I. I remember opening it standing.

Did you save it? Please tell me you saved it so you can have frame it.

Oh, I have it. I have it. Yeah, I have. I still have the letter. And I remember looking at it, like, kind of like how we started this conversation, like, what is osteoporosis even? I. I was. I knew I. I'd heard that before, but I was like, really? What is that, though? And I googled it and like, the blood just drained from my face. And it was like, medications, fractures, you know, loss of independence, all that stuff is what I was reading. And I'm just like, you know, how defeating is that, like, in the moment to just read that? And all of us who have been on a health journey who have like, you know, had something like, have had those kinds of setbacks, you. You understand where I'm coming from, where I was just deflated. And especially if you add in that my father, he passed away when I was two months old. And I. My entire life, I had this fear that I was going to have some kind of health issues, some kind of progression that would take away the years that he didn't get with me. And I was going down that path with my kids, you know, and I. I was just. I was scared, I was worried, I was overwhelmed. I had no idea what to do, where to start. And that is. That was like a hit rock bottom. I remember I was laying on the couch across from my wife. My daughter was upstairs sleeping. She's a little baby, and she was pregnant with my son. And I looked up and I saw my favorite picture of my daughter on the wall. She was wearing this little polka dot dress, standing in front of a white picket fence. Blond hair, blue eyes, innocent, sweetest could be. And I broke down crying, and I cried hard, like, so it was the kind of cry that empties the sum of life's burdens. And after I was done, I looked over at my wife and I said, I just want to dance with my daughter on her wedding day. And she needed her daddy. And I questioned whether I was even going to be alive. To be there for that was like my turning point in this whole journey was, that's rock bottom. There's nowhere else to go. And that is where I started doing the research, the reading, figuring all these things out and not only making progress in my own health, but I decided I was going to help other people. And now it's, you know, turned into global programs helping people all over the world build stronger bones. And it's been a good. Been a good journey.

So let me recap this for the listeners because I'd actually prefer not to go into the medicines because I think there's a lot more interesting things to talk about. But if you get your bone density and you're diagnosed with osteoporosis, you're going to be offered medicine. And I think the people listening are typically people who say, you know, I prefer to avoid that. And so one question I would have is, did you wind up on medicine or did you. Medicine for osteoporosis or did you say, no, I'm going a different path here?

Yeah, that's going to be the standard recommendation for most people. Calcium, vitamin D. Take a walk. Here's your bone medication. We'll see you in a year or two for your next bone density scan.

That is your teeth fall out, right? Because you.

Yeah, right. That is. That is. That is the standard recommendation. That is woefully inadequate for me. I didn't go the medication route. I would say I am pro. Do everything you possibly can naturally before considering medication as an option. Because a lot of times, and this is an opinion, but, um, you know, after having over a thousand conversations with people before they've come into our programs, I really understand that the majority of the time a medication is. Was not the right approach for some of these people to start with. There is so much more they could have done. And a lot of times medications are prescribed. And this is on the physician's part. This is something that all physicians should be looking at, these bone turnover markers and, like, before they even start providing a recommendation for a medication. So, because if somebody has really low bone turnover and you go prescribe a medication that suppresses the activity level of cells that break down bone, that's not a good thing. Right. So there's just. I think there's more that needs to be done on the physician's part at the time of diagnosis. And I think from the patient's perspective, they need to operate from a place of education, empowerment, and, you know, not just jumping into the first thing that's recommended, because there's usually a lot more that can be done. Now it is a little bit of a different story if somebody is coming into their physician and they are already fracturing multiple times from, like, really low trauma or no trauma, like they. They just fall over and shatter their hips or like break their femur or something. That's a different story.

Right.

That is an indicator of really poor quality bone. And usually there is some kind of intervention that needs to be done right then at that point. But the majority of people are not in that position.

So.

My recommendation is you can just say like, look, I'm not saying no because to the medication, I'm just saying not yet. Can you help me get more information? Can you help me get more objective data to help make the most educated, informed decision? Buy yourself some time. My goal is to get every single patient that is in that position, that's not in like a dire, you know, life's life or death situation to be able to say, give me a year. And I want the physician to say, like, okay, go to. Go to bone coach then. And you know, get. Get your plan in place.

Right. So the thing that I'll say is, I want. The other thing I'll emphasize that you were very kind not to emphasize, but I will emphasize is that as physicians, the majority of physicians are at this point, pretty algorithmic.

Hold on. They have seven minutes to figure you out, so they have to be algorithm. Absolutely.

It's not a. It's not a fault. It's a fact that here's your diagnosis, here's your medication, go do some exercise. Goodbye. And that's all they have time for. That's all they can think about. That's all they've been trained for.

Right.

And again, it's not a fault of any single person. It is a system's fault.

Just gonna say system. That's a systems thing, right?

And the thing that we're trying to do as another type of medicine is to really look at the person, not the disease and not. And to really help the person individually, what they need, which is what you're advocating, not. Not what their disease, what medication their disease tells you to give him. And anybody listening that's going to be looking at that, just understand that, again, it's nobody's fault. You don't have to. I mean, you can try to fight the system, but you're not likely going to fight the system. So as you said, you want to be your own advocate and you want to really make sure to do everything you can. The thing I will say, though, is we a lot of times talk about exercise. And I've had. I've had a significant amount, and this is, again, mostly women and that. But that they'll go for walks, which is great. And it's just not enough. Right. It's just like. And some people just will not take that next step for whatever reason. Maybe they have pain, joint pain, that they can't do it. Some people have Work. And they, or, or they just can't take that next step until you take that. Like you either need to really work your bones to reverse something. Just like if your muscles are weak, you have to work them or you have to do something else.

Well, the walk is good for your heart. If you walk rapidly and you, you know, get your heart rate up, that's good for your heart, that's not necessarily good for your bones, right? It's like, what are you treating with the exercise? What's the exercise treating? And make sure that you have a mix. So you get your bones, your heart, your muscles.

So what is a good exercise?

Yeah, I was gonna say that. Let's talk about walking for a sec first and then we'll talk about the other forms of exercise. So because walking is part of the standard recommendation, right? That's going to be given calcium, vitamin D, walking bone drug. That's the standard recommendation for the majority of patients. Walking is, it's important, right? It's great for your health. You should be walking. Everybody or most people should be walking, right? But that can't be your only form of exercise because especially as it relates to your bones, the best it's going to be able to help you do is maintain and not lose your bone, at least in your lower half. But think about your forearm, right? Where a lot of fractures happen when people get older. How, how much stimulation is that forearm getting when you're going for a walk?

Typing doesn't do it either.

What's that?

Typing does not qualify. That does not strengthen your bones, right?

So we have to think about these things. So you actually need different types of stimuli for your bones. You need muscle pulling on bone and you need impact. And the most effective interventions are using one or both of those things in combination. Okay. So in terms of walking, that is a form of weight bearing exercise. Weight bearing exercise is anything that your body and your bones are doing that where they're working against gravity to keep you upright. There are things that you're doing on your feet and they're placing a good kind of healthy stress on your bones. There's low impact, high impact weight bearing. So this would be things like you're, you're running, you're jogging, you're hiking, you're dancing, you're gardening, you're playing with the kids, the grandkids outside, those kinds of things. Or it could be your yoga, your Pilates, your Tai chi, your qigong, right? Those are all weight bearing exercise. You want those things, that's important. But there's Also non weight bearing exercise. And this would be where your body and your bones do not work against gravity to keep you upright and they're not placing a good healthy stress on your bones. What would those be? Cycling and swimming. If you do these things, it's not to say that you can't do them. Like if you're riding a bike on a trip or you like to ride a bike at the end of the day and it's really relaxing for you, it's not to say don't do that, but do not count that as your only form of exercise. Same thing is if you get in the pool and all you do is lapse and you get a great cardio and you get out and you're like, gosh, I feel great, my workout's done. No, it's not.

You workout is done. Your cardio workout is done, right?

Yeah. You're not, you're not putting that stress and that stimulus on the bone so you can do those things. Don't overdo those things. But you could do those things. But just don't count it as your only form of exercise. Because astronauts deal with the same thing up in space, right. When there's no gravity and their body and their bones are not working against that, they can lose bone density. Just like Ed was, was talking about earlier is use it, you don't use it, you're going to lose it. Right. So what else do we have to add into our plan to make sure we're not losing it and to, and, and to actually support building it? That would be resistance training, muscle strengthening exercise. This is, this is so important. This would be your resistance bands, your dumbbells, your barbells, your machines at the gym. And this would be exercises like squats or overhead presses or. This one's a little scary for some people that, you know, if you, if you're not into working out deadlifts. I know it sounds scary and intimidating. Gosh. But it's, it's like a foundational human movement too. And if you can, if you can get some of those one and chin ups too, right? And maybe like box jumps or jumping, those kinds of things, those are all great exercises that we can incorporate. If you don't know how to do those, you can go to somebody who can teach you how to do those. And you can, if you have pain or anything like that that's preventing you help have them evaluate your body mechanics and teach you how you can make modifications to slowly progress up to where you're providing that stimulus. You need if you're already an active person and you are somebody who's like, this is a big one. I think cardio, the cardio, the people who do cardio. And that's all they do too. This is another thing to look out for. If all you do is run or run marathons or run really long distances, you're, and you're running in the same direction and your, your feet are just going the same way. You're not providing any varied impact and you're not providing any other stimulus for your bones. So long term that's not going to be the best thing. You have to incorporate resistance training. It is a must do.

Yeah, I'm going to say something people are not going to be happy with, but you touch it, what you're touching upon. I actually don't think people should be running long distance on pavement. If you want to go in the woods and vary your very. Yes, that's fine, dude.

Warn us before you torch the whole show. I mean, you just said something really.

Like, but like you said, there's repetitive. You don't, you're only strengthening a small portion of muscles. You're, you don't have any variety.

And.

You can turn off and just be in the zone, which is great except you're actually not present to what's going on in your body. And trail running is very different and the impact is very different. And you have to make sure that you're not going to clip your ankle, which is really important. And you can work your ankle muscles and go, etc. So yeah.

All right, so we, we are coming towards the end and I feel like we still have some meat to chew.

Go, go.

So go choose some meat or, or beans. By the way, I was in the gym yesterday and it was apparently like high school boy hour because it was all high school boys in the gym. And I'm this 52 year old postmenopausal woman. I'm like, huh. So I'm with the trainer. I look behind me, they have placed the, you know those box jumps that you were just referring to. They placed three boxes on top of each other so they were almost five feet tall. And I said to the trainer, this is, this is why accidents are like the number one cause of death for teenage boys. Because they were trying to jump from the floor onto the top of them with no trampoline assistance. They were just trying to jump five feet and they missed and they went sliding down the box. And the trainer was like, no, you have to connect the boxes together. If you're going to do that so you don't. You don't go crazy and break your neck. But I was laughing when you said box jumps because I was like, oh, up teenage boys, which are none of the above, who have osteoporosis. But anyway, what are the things. Let's transition to what people can do. We're going to skip the medication. We've talked about diagnosis. I think we need to put a plug in that. If you have osteoporosis and it's in an earlier age, you want to get checked for celiac, and if you have celiac, you want to get checked for osteoporosis. Bidirectional straight for sure. Set that to the side.

We.

What can people do? What. What are some top things that you're recommending people. People engage in to reverse and slow the decline? Aside from the stuff we talked about.

The fir one of the first ones and is I wouldn't even focus on reversal, right. A lot of times that, like, when people come to me, that's what they say, I want to reverse osteoporosis or I want to reverse osteopenia. And I'm like, it's great to have the goal, but we need to focus on. You're not going to see results in your bone density scan for a year, year and a half, two years. It's not a quick fix. There are no magic cures. It takes time to do these things. So we have to look at leading indicators and start doing the things in your life to get you moving in the right direction. So the biggest kind of areas that we need to affect are figuring out if you have any kind of root causes that are still contributing to bone loss. So getting to the root cause, working with functional medicine practitioners, naturopathic doctors, you know, your medical team also, and knowing how to have those conversations, knowing what your lab results mean when they get back, knowing how to spot those patterns. That is so important to all of this. Because if you are still losing, you know, you can't start going up and improving if you're still going down and losing. So addressing the root cause, that's like, that's a big part of this. And usually what we can't do is we can't make an assumption that just because you're a post menopausal woman that hormones is the only cause of your bone loss that we want, we want to know, is there something else contributing? So, and then if you are not a post menopausal woman and you're a 30, 40 year old male or 34 year old woman or at any age range really, it's just understanding where you're at, what's your current picture and how do you make adjustments from there. That's kind of the first part. Diet.

Plug in here Kevin, for ensuring that you're working with a functional medicine doctor to do provoked testing for heavy metals because they love the bones and they'll hang out in your bones and put you at risk for osteoporosis. So lead, mercury, particularly lead, really huge plug provoked. Not just a hair test or a baseline urine, but provoking it.

Yep, absolutely. And a lot of times when, if somebody has already had that heavy metal exposure and it's stored in their bones when they, if they're a postmenopausal woman, right. They're having that bone loss that a lot of times that with that bone could, those heavy metals can come back out into circulation too. So you have this auto intoxication that's taking place. So that could be another thing to consider. Another one I would say is diet. Digestion, absorption, those are all big parts of this and big pieces of this anti inflammatory diet. Lean proteins. Protein is actually so important for your muscles and your bones. Like minimum 30 grams of protein. Try to get 30 grams of protein per meal if you possibly can, on that first and last meal of the day. If you've got more protein, 40 grams or so, that's great, right? That could be really, really helpful. And it's having quality protein too is also important. And, and then in terms of other nutrients, you know, omega 3 fatty acids are a great addition. Vitamin D we talked about earlier, calcium, magnesium, vitamin K, but not just, not just like the K that you would find in your plants. Also you want to get K2 MK4, K2, MK7, those are going to help with activating the osteocalcin and matrix GLA protein, which are going to help the calcium go and be directed to the bones to help with mineralization, but also to help prevent that calcium from going to your soft tissues like your kidneys and your arteries. So that's another important nutrient. You can get K1 in your dark leafy greens, that's a great source. You can get K2 MK4 in you know, grass fed beef liver or you know, pasture raised chicken or egg yolks. You can get MK7 vitamin K2, MK7, you can get that from fermented foods, hard cheeses, sauerkraut, Bacterial fermentation in our guts can actually be a source. So if you, if you've got a healthy gut that can help with the production of these nutrients. So that's, that's important. Vitamin C also is another important nutrient. I think everybody understands vitamin C is important for our health for a lot of reasons. But in terms of actually helping that collagen protein matrix that is your bones, vitamin C is stimulating pro collagen. It's enhancing collagen synthesis, and it's stimulating that alkaline phosphatase activity, which is a marker for bone building cell formation. So there are great sources of vitamin C that you can get that are natural whole food sources. Also in addition to supplementation and berries, citrus fruits are some great options to get your vitamin C. And then if you're looking at the veggie side, you know, and you can't tolerate peppers because you're. It's a nightshade and you've got an autoimmune condition. Go with steamed broccoli or steamed Brussels sprouts or sauerkraut or those kinds of things to help you get that in. And then exercise. We touched on that. Super important. You need to be doing those things. You need to do it to a point where you're providing the stimulus you need to become stronger. If the weight is light enough to do 50 times, chances are that's too light. Right. You're not providing a stimulus. And if you're not actually feeling it a little bit after you're done, chances are the stimulus is not there. And then stress and sleep. You need to reduce your stress. You need to improve your sleep. It's pretty well documented. Poor sleep quality is going to reduce your bone density. So prioritize those things.

Got it. I feel like we're scratching the surface here, but I've deliberately asked you fewer questions because it's such a big topic. So I think what we should pivot to given we try not to make this longer than an hour.

Right.

Because it's long for people. So a for the listeners, thanks for listening. Be how can people find you? Because this is, this is the, the start of the conversation at the end of it. So how do people find you and follow you? And we'll put everything in the show notes for sure.

Yeah. So you can always find me@bonecoach.com we've got stronger bones coaching programs. I mean, we have got over. Over 5,000 people have come through these programs. It's focused on helping you slow, stop, prevent bone loss, build bone strength, prevent fracture and injury and just enjoy your later years. That's the whole focus of this so that's those programs are all@bonecoach.com and then you can find us on all the social channels, Instagram at Bonecoach, Kevin, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, those are all at Bone Coach. So you can find us there. And then if you, I don't know if you have this or not, but maybe we can give this to your audience. If we could put my free Stronger Bones masterclass in the show notes maybe. And that that's a great three step process for them to walk to. And I'll give them a free Bone Healthy recipes guide just for signing up. So if that's in the show notes, I would check that out too.

We'll get that in there. All right, listeners, this was Kevin Ellis. Thank you for joining us. Kevin, thank you for being here for this episode of the Five Journeys Feel freaking Amazing podcast. We're so psyched you were here. Everything will be in the show notes. You'll be able to find him. And thanks for being here today.

Thanks for having me. It.