Osteoporosis

This tweet about osteoporosis was enlightening and reminded me of the recent change to the levels that constitute hypertension. 

@AKECassels, author of “Selling Sickness,” says his entire view of medicine changed 30 years ago because of one disease: osteoporosis.

In the early 1990s, “a major pharmaceutical company in the US created a new drug to treat this condition—osteoporosis—which at that point wasn't very well understood. In fact, there wasn't really an agreed upon definition,” he says.

Representatives from pharmaceutical companies and doctors convened at the WHO and decided which level of bone density ought to be considered "normal."

“They set it at a certain level, in a way that…diagnosed something like 50% of the female population over 70 with having this condition…Basically overnight this portion of the population that has bone density below this now has this condition called osteoporosis.”

They effectively “medicalized normal aging of the basically entire female population. Overnight,” he says.

The company that marketed the drug donated bone density testing equipment to hospitals and clinics. Many millions of American women were prescribed a blockbuster drug against osteoporosis. And it turns out that that drug, when taken over several years, “actually makes people’s bones more brittle, more prone to breaking,” he says.

There's even a term osteopenia (reduced bone mass of lesser severity than osteoporosis) that could be used to spook people into taking medication that allegedly prevents the progression to osteoporosis. This category of medication is the bisphosphonates (like Alendronate, Risedronate, Zoledronic acid) that slow bone breakdown.

As Cassels says in the previously mentioned tweet, the medical industry focuses on getting people to take pills or undergo medical procedures. In the case of osteoporosis, there's little to no attention made to how to prevent falls that may lead to bone fractures. Improving balance, leg strength and ankle flexibility offers no profit to the medical industry and for that reason it is ignored.

Cassels gives a good overview of the dangers of overdiagnosing in this video: 

Old people, worried about their health, are the most likely to subject themselves to testing and I'm certainly not immune. After my December 2024 dream in which I was told I only had a few months to live, I underwent blood testing that showed my PSA levels were a little elevated. The doctor who ordered the tests did say this was not unusual at my age but still recommended further testing. I declined but I realised then how easy it would be to get sucked into the system.

In my first meeting with the doctor, my blood pressure when measured was quite elevated (probably because I rarely visit doctors) and I immediately began to worry that I was hypertensive. I ended up buying a device for measuring blood pressure that at least reassured me that I wasn't hypertensive. During my time in Australia, I did get two basel cell carcinomas removed but in the future I'm thinking that the application of Ivermectin cream might be a viable alternative. There is a tiny basel cell carcinoma (self diagonosed) that I've noticed that I could use for testing.