Bone Density and Cancer – A Natural Guide for Support During and After Treatment

In this episode, Carla explores the importance of supporting bone density during and after cancer treatments like chemotherapy, radiation and hormone therapy. These treatments can impact bone health by disrupting bone remodelling processes, leading to an increased risk of fractures and osteoporosis. Maintaining optimal bone density is essential for overall health and quality of life, especially for cancer patients and survivors. Carla covers key strategies and resources to help protect and enhance bone health.

Key Strategies for Bone Density Support

1. Calcium-Rich Foods - Ensuring sufficient calcium intake is crucial. While dairy is a well-known source, there are many non-dairy options: 

• Soy products: such as milk, tofu, and lecithin
• Leafy greens: like spinach, cabbage, and bok choy
• Nuts and seeds: including almonds, Brazil nuts, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds
• Fish: such as salmon, sardines, and anchovies
• Other sources: figs, eggs, cinnamon, and oregano

2. Exercise Physiology for Bone Health - Weight-bearing and resistance exercises are essential for maintaining bone density. An exercise physiologist, especially one trained in oncology or osteoporosis, can tailor a safe, effective exercise regimen to individual needs and capabilities.

3. Supplements for Bone Health - Supplementation can be helpful when dietary intake alone is insufficient:

• A personalised naturopathic supplement providing calcium, boron, Vitamin D, Vitamin K, and additional cofactors for bone density support.
• Research evident Bone Probiotics: Probiotics that promote gut health, which has been linked to bone health, and help support bone mineralization.
• Vitamin D: Essential for calcium absorption and bone mineralization; personalized dosages based on individual blood levels are ideal.

4. OsteoStrong Clinics - OsteoStrong offers a unique approach to bone health with osteogenic loading sessions, which use short, controlled bursts of pressure to stimulate bone growth. This can be a valuable addition to other bone-strengthening strategies. https://osteostrong.com.au

Closing Thoughts - Carla emphasises the importance of working with a comprehensive healthcare team, including PROSPER Cancer Care Practitioners, oncologists and exercise physiologists, to develop a tailored plan for supporting bone density. Maintaining bone health is a key component of cancer survivorship and long-term wellness.

Next Episode Preview: Carla discusses natural ways to nurture yourself during radiation therapy.

Find PROSPER Natural Cancer CARE on Instagram @prosper.cancer.care or visit www.prospercancercare.co.

For more information or to get in touch, connect with Carla on Instagram @carlawrenn or visit www.carlawrenn.com.

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended to be informational only and represents the opinion of the participants, but not necessarily their workplace. It is not intended to be used as medical advice and does not take the place of advice from a qualified health care practitioner in a clinical setting. Please check with your healthcare practitioner before embarking upon any of the treatments or lifestyle changes discussed.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Prosper Natural Cancer Care. I'm Carla Wren. We discuss naturopathic cancer care, integrative oncology and lifestyle medicine, examining complimentary medicine tradition, science, and evidence-based personalized health care for people with cancer. If you or a loved one has a cancer diagnosis, or you're a professional with an interest in complementary medicine or cancer care, you've come to the right place. Let's prosper. But before we start today, let's take a moment to define the word prosper and why it's an important word for me in the work I do. Prosper is defined as to flourish physically, grow strong and healthy, to become strong and flourishing, to cause to succeed or thrive. These words and words like choose hope are important to me as I aim to empower, educate, and encourage people in my practice and on this podcast. Please be sure to take a moment at the end of today's show to listen to the very important disclaimer. So let's look at supporting bone density during and after oncology treatment. And this might be thought of as something that, ah, bone density, it's not really the biggest problem I've got at the moment after someone's being diagnosed with cancer. But we all want to recover well from cancer and live a long and healthy life. And bone density really is a marker of your ability to age well and stay active and live well as we get older. And so many cancer treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation, and hormone therapy, can take a toll on the body in various ways, including in bone health. And so maintaining optimal bone density during and after oncology treatment is crucial for that overall well-being and quality of life. And so we're going to explore some of the strategies and resources to support bone density throughout the cancer journey. And I think this is an important one. If you're the carer or the loved one or an oncology patient yourself dealing with cancer, we also have to think about lots of these whole health principles. So let's examine this a bit today. And this information is relevant too. If you're having bone density issues, but you're not at all in that space of being diagnosed with cancer, you can still use this understanding about bone health to improve your risk of progression to osteopenia or osteoporosis. So let's take a minute to understand bone health. So bone health is a bone is a dynamic tissue that undergoes constant remodeling and old bones being replaced with new bone throughout our life. And certain things will have an impact on that bone remodel, including nutritional deficiencies. But cancer treatments, particularly certain types of chemotherapy and hormone therapy, can interfere with this process of bone remodeling, leading to a decreased bone density and an increased risk of fractures and osteoporosis. And this is what we're essentially trying to avoid that osteoporotic change or increased risk of fractures has a big impact on well-being. So strategies for supporting bone density is something that we really should all think of throughout our lives as we age. And so calcium-rich foods are often promoted as a way of you know impacting bone health. Consuming adequate amounts of calcium is essential for maintaining bone health. And while dairy products are common sources of calcium, they're certainly not the only source of calcium or the best source of calcium, in my opinion. And individuals who are lactose intolerant or prefer non-dairy options can still meet their calcium needs through various foods such as soy products, things like milk, tofu, and lekathin, leafy greens like spinach, cabbage, and bok choy, nuts and seeds, including almonds. And almonds really are a very high source of calcium, as are sesame seeds. Now, sesame seeds you can access in foods like tahini, which is a lovely spread, you can use also in things like homice. There's lots of sesame seeds, or even buying unhulled sesame seeds at your local whole food supplier and sprinkling them on salads or on your porridge, can really increase your calcium levels. Brazil nuts and sunflower seeds are also great. And then fish, particularly fish with fine bones, think of the little fine bones and sardines and chovies and salmon, especially tinned salmon, are really great sources of very bioavailable calcium in those little tiny fish bones that just crush into the foods that we're eating. Other sources include things like figs, eggs, cinnamon, and oregano. So we can get lots of calcium from a whole foods diet. So thinking about how you can add those foods in and make a bit of a routine. You know, maybe you do a high calcium nut and seed sprinkle to pop on salads or your breakfast with almonds crushed. Brazil nuts, you could slice them up, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds, or maybe you factor in sardines a couple of times a week. Um, just have a think and order yourself where are those foods and are there enough? You know, you could chop up some dried figs and add them to that nut and seed mix, and how can you get more calcium into your diet is basically the question we should ask ourselves whether or not we've had a cancer diagnosis. Next, consulting with an exercise physiologist is really something I would highly recommend. Regular exercise, particularly weight-bearing exercise and resistance exercise, is beneficial for maintaining bone density. So consulting with an exercise physiologist, especially one with an expertise in bone density, osteoporosis or oncology, can help develop a personalized exercise regime that tailors to your capabilities and your needs around bone density. And getting that right advice, and it might be doing five minutes of um simple body weighted exercises a day, will really dramatically improve your bone density in all the studies. And so exercise physiology really forms an important part of the care team. And I've talked to you about that in other podcasts I've done, but it's important to think around um the bone density implications of that or benefits of that exercise and whether or not you've got osteopenia or any bone density concerns yet for healthy aging, that exercise is really important. Now, supplementation is another tool we can use to support bone density, and so in addition to dietary sources, calcium supplements might be necessary to ensure adequate intake of the essential nutrients for bone health, and they include more than just calcium. Some key nutrients to consider are things like vitamin D, vitamin K, boron, calcium, and so we can find supplements that have really great forms of calcium because not all forms of calcium will affect the bones in the same way. And so those great bioavailable sources of calcium have lots of positive impacts. Cheaper, nastier sources of calcium can have negative impacts on the body, particularly around cardiovascular health. So getting some advice around supplementation is important because high levels of calcium in the wrong part of the body can definitely increase risk of cardiovascular events. So getting the right form of calcium that means the calcium is bonded to the right form of minerals. It's a bit like chemistry. Um, calcium hydroxyapetite, calcium amino acetelate, there's calcium citrate, all of these different forms of calcium do different things. And for bone density, we want to find the right type for you. And so a calcium supplement that has the right form of calcium but also has things like boron, um, vitamin D, vitamin K can really help improve outcomes around cancer and the bone density, but also bone density in general. So get advice, um, chat to me about this in your next consultation if you feel you're at risk of bone density issues. And we can often see this run in families. So if you know you're having treatment, um you maybe have been avoiding dairy foods, or you have a family member who has osteoporosis, it could be a sibling if you're older, or it could be a parent, grandparent, then we really start need to start to be proactive about bone density. And you can get a scan done through your GP or oncologist if you haven't already to understand your bone density. It's called a DEXA scan, D E X A DEXA scan, and it looks at your bone density in a couple of key sites around the body and will give you a number measure of whether you've got normal healthy bone density, osteopenia, which is a change in bone density that is a precursor to osteoporosis, and then the severity of your osteoporosis if you do have that. Now, another really novel new to the market supplementation that I have access to for my patients is a form of probiotic that has an impact on bone density. So, probiotics we know play a role in promoting gut health, and that is very much linked to bone health. The specific formulation that I use is designed to support bone density by increasing or maintaining bone integrity and promoting bone mineralization and bone mass through the microbiome and the gut bone axis. And so we want to look at how we can adopt all different strategies, and a probiotic is a really simple intervention to ensure those nutrients you get from your diet, but also the nutrients like calcium and the cofactors for bone density actually get to where they need to go, and probiotics really help with that. Another avenue that I like to refer my patients to, and this might be something for you to look up, is osteostrong. Now, osteostrong is a group of clinics specializing in their unique bone health uh assessment and looking at uh creating what they're calling osteogenic loading sessions or specific weight sessions, uh exercise sessions that stimulate um control pressure to encourage bone growth and increase bone density. And consulting with these kind of professionals like Osteostrong really complements other bone supporting strategies. So check out OsteoStrong if you haven't heard about them. Um, maintaining bone density during and after oncology treatment is essential for overall health and your quality of life, like I mentioned. And so, if we could incorporate some calcium-rich foods, some targeted exercise, some very unique supplementations that are very um safe and low risk, we can really well work towards improving your bone health, but also reducing the risk of osteoporosis, osteopenia, bone fractures. And so make sure that you chat with me about bone density in your next consultation. And if you are someone who is suffering from um bone density concerns or has a genetic tendency to bone density concerns, reach out to a complimentary medicine practitioner, a naturopath in particular, who can help you establish better patterns in your routine, diet, lifestyle, and supplementation to improve your bone density. So, next episode we'll be discussing natural ways to nurture yourself during radiotherapy. For more information on Prosper Natural Cancer Care, visit prospercancercare.co. For more information and to get in touch, please visit Carlaren.com. Disclaimer This podcast is intended to be informational only and represents the opinion of the participants, but not necessarily their workplace. Please check with your healthcare practitioner before embarking upon any of the treatments or lifestyle changes discussed.