Your Skeleton
I want you to think of your skeleton as a bank of calcium. Why do you need a bank of calcium? It is because everything that happens with cell to cell communication in our bodies is essentially electrical and mediated by calcium ions. If you don’t have enough calcium ions the electrical system in your body won’t work.
The human body relies on a stable source of calcium ions and takes those ions when it needs it from the calcium bank which is your skeleton. Everything needs a steady level of calcium ions in the serum or you die.
The heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, the brain, and every other organ relentlessly take whatever calcium they need from your skeleton, the bank. Sometimes the bank gets overdrawn and then the skeleton fails. I liken this to having a box full of Christmas tree ornaments, your heart, your kidneys, your brain, etc. Your organs are there and healthy but if you don’t have a skeleton, i.e. Christmas tree, on which to hang your ornaments, there won’t be any Christmas. So, we need to think about the Christmas tree as well the ornaments.
The Christmas tree, your skeleton, grows rapidly and reaches maturity about the age of 20, a little earlier for girls than boys. By 22 the skeleton is fully formed. Very few people add bone mass beyond this age and most begin to deplete their skeleton from that age forward.
To truly treat osteoporosis, the loss of bone, all you need to do is return the clock back to when you were younger than 22. It might also be convenient to pick better parents. Then we can solve a lot of osteoporosis. Unfortunately, “Back to The Future” is a movie and not part of your HMO benefits.
