• Bone loss (resorption) is essential for building healthy bones; bone loss leads to new bone formation.

You may think that preventing bone loss is the key to healthy bones, at least that's what the drug and pharmaceutical companies want you to believe, but bone loss is a natural, in fact vital, process.Only bone loss (called resorption) can initiate healthy new bone formation. As with all things in nature, good bone health relies on a balance between this action and counter-action. When your balance shifts to greater bone loss than bone formation, you have an individual choice to make: (a) do nothing, (b) take prescription drugs such as Fosamax and Boniva that increase bone density by slowing bone loss, thus building up old bone, or (c) correct the imbalance through a proper supplement program. Many people choose option (b), because it is the only alternative presented, and it's easy -- one pill per day (or per month!). Many women do not understand that not all bone is equal, and that there are much better, non-pharmaceutical options available.(links about bones)

Supplements Build Healthy Bones

Keep Old Bone                   

• Prescription medications increase bone density by keeping old bone from degenerating (a natural process). This inhibits new bone formation, which is needed to maintain healthy bones. 

The prescription remedies such as  Fosamax and Actonel that, in addition to the plethora of side effects they cause, operate by reducing the rate at which you breakdown bone and do not speed up the rate at which you form bone. While they may yield an increase in bone density, they do not necessarily prevent fractures nor do they promote healthy bones. Therefore, you are keeping old, weaker, less flexible bone around (which is where unwanted heavy metals store themselves) instead of building new, strong, healthy bone.

• New bone is more flexible than old bone: it is strong, with the ability to bear both compression (running, jumping) and tensile (flexing) pressure.

As the balance between bone breakdown and formation shifts toward breakdown, we don't have to choose to keep old bone around as our only option. We have another choice: to make new bone. There are many biochemical pathways involved in the processes that ultimately result in bone formation. When nutrients necessary to carry out a pathway are not available,  the pathway shuts off. The key to ensure new bone formation, is to make sure that all nutrients necessary for the involved pathways are available.