Osteoporosis treatment or strontium citrate?

Hi @greff, I also have osteopenia and my doc told me I need to take 1200 mg calcium a day. I tried it for a couple of weeks but it made me so constipated I stopped taking it and really try to eat more foods with calcium and drink more milk which I rarely did before I was diagnosed. Here's a good article on the subject:

Calcium and Bone Health -- https://www.helpguide.org/articles/healthy-eating/calcium-and-bone-health.htm

Thanks for the article. What makes even more of a bugger on top of having Celiacs is I am lactose intolerant, so dairy doesn't set well with me, which of course, is full of calcium. I will check this article out. Thanks again.

Hi all. I‘’m a bit confused - some of the comments I read talk about research, do you really think that you can do enough research & separate fact from fiction and will know better than a physician who went through undergrad, med school, residency & perhaps a fellowship? I think the bigger problem is a lack of confidence in the medical & research world. To those that comment on the side effects of the meds, has your physician reported it? If not, why not. Why isn’t your doc altering your meds when you complain? I feel all of your pain as I have been there & continue to travel down that road but, I trust my medical team to be watching out for me. This is your life, do what’s best 🙂

On the flip side, if you are better informed you can communicate better with your doctors and possibly get a better outcome. I have a great Mayo doctor team but there are many different specialties which they also don’t know about or have no medical training to handle. I was prescribed gabapentin for my symptoms of neuropathy which were only numbness. After telling my primary care doctor it’s not helping she consulted with her team and and was told the drug does nothing for numbness. Then when diagnosed by a neurologist the next month with idiopathic small fiber neuropathy I got the same from him - nothing available to fix the numbness. Just my humble opinion 🙂

I do agree that a person needs to have confidence in the medical professionals they see. However, not all medical professionals are trained the same way. Their education, residence, fellowship varies for most specialists/physicians. I have had great doctors and I have had doctors that misdiagnosed, mistreated, and appeared to work outside of their scope of expertise. I appreciate the comments on this website as sometimes we need to advocate for ourselves or process with others to aid in making medical decisions. Getting second opinions is a good thing. To give one example of several specialists who misdiagnosed me and could not come up with why I had multiple symptoms that were effecting me, I kept getting referred from one provider to another when the whole time, the issue was a med issue. I found this out with the help of others who were also frustrated with feeling like they were not getting any answers. I do agree that a person needa to find a medical provider that they have confidence in, rather than just being frustrated with seeing a medical professional who is not treating the medical issue with success.

You really have to be careful of the calcium you take. Many on the market are full of 'fillers'. Years ago, after 2 miscarriages, my OBgYN put me on calcium, Within just a few years I had bone spurs all along my spine, Someone shared Shaklee with me and I switched to their calcium. Within just a few months, the spurs started clearing up, my constipation went away. To this day (I'm now 65), my primary care doctor tells me my blood markers are excellent. All that to say.... not all vitamins on the shelves in our healthfood stores are the same!!!

I was put on gabapentin for 14 years....then developed an allergic reaction to it. Was switched to carbamazapene (which my mother's pain doctor said he wouldn't give to his worst enemy). I found out why....one of the biggest side effects is it can cause bone loss. Now I have osteoporosis. I now take tumeric for my nerve pain from transverse myelitis and get even better relief than I ever did from drugs!

I heard that tumeric is difficult for our body to absorb. Do you take anything with it to break it down intestinally.

I take a curcumin that has black pepper and oil in it to help the body absorb it. The orientals have used it for years (besides just in their food)....

I have researches this root for quite sometime but was told that absorbing it doesn't work well. I will give it a try. Thanks for the tip. There are a few articles out there that tumeric also helps with treating Alzheimers. My wife has Early onset Alzheimers but there isn't enough medical evidence that it works but it still males me wonder if it will slow down the progression. She already takes donezapil, but maybe this would also help a bit.