CAUSES OF OSTEOPOROSIS: DO YOU HAVE INDIGESTION?
With women playing a larger role today in positions of greater responsibility and decision-making in business, or in stressful situations managing a home (perhaps without a spouse), their systems can react with problems of indigestion or ulcers. The D.H.S.S. estimates for 1987 that the ingredients for prescription antacids cost ?20.9 million, with millions more spent on non-prescription indigestion remedies. Growing numbers of women are consuming them on a regular basis without knowing the potential risk.
Many aids to digestion contain aluminium and some have calcium in their ingredients. Which type you choose could be important to your bone mass. When antacids contain aluminium, extra calcium is excreted, with the calcium coming from your bones. A side effect is constipation, but the greatest concern to bone specialists is the aluminium (even in small amounts) that combines with dietary phosphorus and calcium, drawing them out of your body into the urine, thus probably weakening bones and leading to osteoporosis and osteomalacia.
It’s better to alter your meals and/or lifestyle to reduce your indigestion problems without resorting to antacids. But if that is not possible, at least change to an antacid without aluminium. If you are at risk of osteoporosis, indigestion remedies containing calcium would be good substitutes, neutralizing acid and serving as a calcium supplement as well. Examine the labels carefully on antacid boxes and jars, or seek the help of the chemist or your doctor.
Speaking in Manchester at the 1985 Congress of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, Professor John Savory, pathologist, said ‘Aluminium toxicity is the most important trace metal related to bone disease.’
In this aluminium-using society, there are other ways the substance can enter our bodies:
• It is in drinking water clarified by adding alum powder or
aluminium salts (a problem in the North of England, e.g., Stockport and Newcastle, where towns are supplied with water from Pennine reservoirs). Aluminium may also be in drinking water after acid rain has leaked trace amounts of the metal from clay soils into water supplies. Ask your local Water Authority for the aluminium content of the tap water you use for drinking and cooking. If it is high, change to bottled water.
It is absorbed into the skin from some underarm deodorants.
It is added to many foods (household baking powders,
individually-wrapped processed cheeses, pancake mixes, frozen dough, some pickled cucumbers, glace cherries, and ’silver’ dragees for cake decorating).
• Aluminium cookware can add to your daily intake if pans are
old and worn, especially when salty, acidic or alkaline foods are cooked in them. It would be prudent to look critically at your aluminium saucepans and discard any with pitted surfaces.
• Do not use aluminium pellets when weighting the pastry of
flans – substitute ceramic or glass beads or dry beans.
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