The Great Osteoporosis Scam

How conventional osteoporosis care often makes things worse and the forgotten ways to regain bone health.

by A Midwestern Doctor

Story at a Glance

•A gradual weakening of the bones which predisposes one to fractures is one of the most common and significant consequences of aging. Presently, to address it, we wisely try to head off bone loss in our younger years and unwisely routinely scan the density of aging bones so that a large volume of patients can be sold drugs to increase bone density.

•This approach is misguided because the data from those scans often does not correlate to the actual strength of the bones and because simply increasing bone density often creates brittle bones that fracture under stress. Additionally, the most commonly used drugs to address bone density are notorious for their side effects.

•Anytime a large drug market exists (e.g., presently osteoporosis affects around 20% of women over 50), the medical industry will dismiss any approach to the condition which does not result in it being able to sell large amounts of lucrative medical services.

•Because of this, there is relatively little knowledge of the actual causes of osteoporosis or the most effective ways to restore the strength of the bones. The causes and treatments of osteoporosis will be the focus of this article.

Note: in February’s open thread, I conducted a survey of which articles had the most interest from readers in being covered. The top choice was “the Great Osteoporosis Scam” (which I believe is illustrative of how many people are affected by this) so I spent the last month working on this article.

The years I have spent studying the medical industry have made me appreciate how often economic principles can allow one to understand its complex and contradictory behavior. For example, I believe many of the inconsistencies in medical ethics (e.g., “mothers have an absolute right to abort their children” and “mothers cannot refuse to vaccinate their children because it endangers their child’s life”) can be explained by simply acknowledging that whatever makes money is deemed “ethical.”

Sales Funnels

In my eyes, one of the most important business principles for understanding medicine are sales funnels, a method of selling products where you initially cast a wide net, and then successively cast smaller nets for increasingly expensive products as you start catching your initial customers.

Note: the term “funnels” is used to describe how the sales pipeline gets narrower as you move to more expensive products.

I typically see two types of (often overlapping) sales funnels in medicine.

The first works by normalizing giving an “innocuous” drug to broad swathes of people and then selling increasingly expensive pharmaceutical drugs to treat the complications many experience from those drugs. One of the most insidious ones affects many of our girls and is one I’ve repeatedly tried to draw attention to:

Note: sources for the above graph include this article, and this article. Many other examples of this funnel exist as well. For instance, a good case can be made that many of the chronic illnesses our children suffer from now (which are very lucrative to “treat”) are a direct consequence of the ever increasing number of vaccines in the marketplace.

The second funnel works by recasting “preventative medicine” and “promoting health” as the task of screening for each person for conditions they are at risk for. The results from these universal screenings are then used to justify selling them medical services (e.g., drug prescriptions). Once that screening becomes normalized, the industry will then pivot to expanding the funnel and having far more services be sold. For example:

•What constitutes a “safe” blood pressure has been continually lowered, and as a result, more and more people are put on blood pressure medications. This in turn has created a variety of problems. For example, the elderly (due to the arteries calcifying with age) need a higher blood pressure for blood to reach the brain, and many hence suffer lightheadedness and catastrophic falls from their blood pressure being lowered.

•Since we started mass cholesterol screenings, what constitutes a “safe” cholesterol has also been continually lowered by the corrupt committees who create the guidelines doctors follow to practice medicine. For example, a widely used calculator which determines ones risk of a stroke or heart attack consistently concludes people are at a high risk of a heart attack and must urgently start statins, yet almost no doctor in practice knows that a 2016 study of 307,591 Americans discovered the calculator overestimates their risk by 5-6 times. Similarly, most doctors aren’t aware that beyond failing to benefit patients, statins are also immensely dangerous drugs (discussed further here).

Note: the folly of this approach is highlighted by a trial which found removing on average 2.8 non-essential drugs from the elderly at one facility caused their 1 year death rate to go from 45%-21% and their hospitalizations that year to go from 30%-11.8%. As far as I know, there is no intervention on the market which offers a benefit comparable to this.

Radiographic Screenings

One of the common ways mass screenings are done is through giving lots of patients X-rays and then funneling those with abnormal imaging into being treated.

For example, women over the age of 50 are advised to get a mammogram every two years so that their deadly breast cancers can be identified and the women can be saved through early treatment for the cancers. However, whenever these screening programs are studied, they are found to not provide a net benefit because:

•Fast growing cancers (the ones you want to catch) will rarely be in the early stage at the exact same time someone gets a mammogram. Conversely, these cancers are normally noticed by doctors or patients (due to the sudden changes they create) and hence are radiographically evaluated independently of the mass screening programs.

•Slow growing cancers (which are unlikely to endanger women) are typically the ones which get caught.

•False positives are quite common with mammograms.

•A positive mammogram result is extremely psychologically stressful and frequently results in a variety of harmful treatments being performed on the women (e.g., having their breasts removed).

Peter Gøtzsche in turn conducted an exhaustive review of the evidence on routine mammogram screening which should have ended the practice (it can be read here). However, his data (which was widely publicized) had no effect on these screening programs. Many (myself included) believe that was because radiologists make so much money from mammograms they have an inherent need to justify the necessity of this routine screening.

Note: many medical specialists depend upon repeatedly performing the same billable service (e.g., vaccinating a child, performing a female pelvic exam, or reading a mammogram).

DEXA Scams

Another universal screening practice for women are dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scans, which calculate the density of bones and hence are believed to be a proxy for bone strength. It is then compared to the average bone density of a 30 year old, and a statistical method is applied to determine how far away their density is from that value which then produces their T-score. Every medical student in turn is taught that a T-score of 0 to -1 is normal, -1 to -2.5 is on the way to being bad (osteopenia) and a T-score that is -2.5 or worse means your bones are weak enough that you have osteoporosis and must urgently begin treatment for it.

If you take a step back, a few questions should come to mind.

First, since bones naturally become less dense with age, most people will have bones that are less dense than those of a 30 year old. In turn, the current of management of osteoporosis accepts that bone loss is inevitable and reasonably tries to prevent that loss early on since it is so much harder to regain it later in life.

Hence, many people due to the normal process of aging will have osteopenia or osteoporosis. Consider for example what this study concluded was of the average T-score by age of Italians.

Note: if, for instance, the average T-score for a group is -2.5, this will mean a lot of people within that average will have a score below -2.5 and conversely, at higher “averages” many in the group will have osteoporsosis. Additionally, T-scores are calculated utilizing the standard deviation of the bone densities in 30 year olds, a value which can be up to 50% smaller than that of older adults.

Second, how accurate are the scans? As it turns out, there is actually a great deal of variance in DEXA scan results depending on which machine is used, how the operator performs the test and what bones are measured, with studies often finding a 5-6% difference in bone density depending on where the test was done. More importantly, since the T-score is based off standard deviations, a 5-6% difference in bone density can, in turn, change the T-score by 0.2-0.4 (which equates to a decade of bone loss) and hence tip many over to an osteoporosis diagnosis.

Note: a similar issue exists with blood pressure, as the stress of being a doctors office often creates enough of a BP elevation for people to be erroneously diagnosed with hypertension and started on blood pressure medications. This condition, in turn, is euphemistically known as “white coat hypertension” but rarely corrected.

Third, is there any point to repeatedly doing them? As it turns out, a study of 4124 older women found that once an initial Dexa result was obtained, there was no additional information of use gained from repeating the study over the next 8 years. Nonetheless, many guidelines recommend getting a scan every 1-2 years, and likewise, Medicare pays for one every 2 years. As these scans typically cost between $150 to $300, that quickly adds up.

Fourth, do the scans accurately reflect bone strength and the risk of fractures? While they are generally predictive of the risk, they are not as accurate as is commonly believed. For example, this study found the osteoporosis status of a patient (determined by their T-score) frequently did not match what was directly observed within bones under a microscope. Similarly, this study found that when bones were deliberately weakened, Dexa scans underestimated how much strength had been lost.

Note: I recently learned from Dr. Mercola that a cheaper method of diagnosing bone strength (which does not expose patients to ionizing radiation) is beginning to be used in Europe. It works by sending ultrasound waves into bone and then analyzing the spectrum created by those waves to assess the health of the bones. As the attached presentation shows, it accurately predicts bone density, and additionally, predicts bone strength. In short, this may be a dramatically superior approach to Dexa scans, but it is unlikely we will see it enter regular use in the United States for at least a decade due to how heavily invested many already are in performing Dexa scans.

---

The Best “Go Paid” Offers on Substack

I thought the interview above was one of my best ever and valued-added by the amazingly insightful duo of Mark Gober and Alec Zeck. I was so impressed with Mark after the interview that I immediately bought his book: An End to Upside Down Liberty: Turning Traditional Political Thinking on Its Head to Break Free from Enslavement. I was so impressed with the book that I bought copies for the Art of Liberty Foundation bookstore at Government-Scam.com/Store.  Become a yearly sponsor of the Art of Liberty Foundation at ArtOfLiberty.org/Sponsor OR "Go Paid" on Substack at the $50 a year level and we will send you a copy as our THANK YOU! 

Go paid at the $5 a month level, and we will send you both the PDF and e-Pub versions of “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! and a coupon code for 10% off anything in the Government-Scam.com/Store.

Go paid at the $ 50-a-year level, and we will send you a free copy of Mark Gober’s book An End to Upside Down Liberty: Turning Traditional Political Thinking on Its Head to Break Free from Enslavement if you live in the US. If you are international, we will give you a $10 credit towards shipping if you agree to pay the remainder.

Support us at the $250 Founding Member Level and get Mark Gober’s book: An End to Upside Down Liberty: Turning Traditional Political Thinking on Its Head to Break Free from Enslavement AND an Everything Bundle – The Sampler of Liberty! - Get BOTH free by going paid as a Founding Member!