A New Tool For Bone Regeneration
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
When it comes to rebuilding bones, one of the tools in the orthopedic surgeon’s toolbox is bone grafts. This involves, to oversimplify it a bit, gluing particles of bone to where bone needs rebuilding. However, this comes with problems, most notably:
- that the bone tissue and the adhesive “glue” need to be prepared separately and mixed in situ, which is fiddly, to say the least
- that the resultant mixture mixed in situ will usually be unevenly mixed, resulting in weak bonding and degradation over time
- having any more of one part or the other in any given site means that bone regeneration and adhesion become a “pick one” matter, when both are critically needed
You may be wondering: why can’t they mix them before putting them in?
And the answer is: because then either the glue will set the bone prematurely (and now we have a clump of bone outside of the body which is not what we wanted), or else the glue will have issues with setting in situ, and now we have bone tissue running down the inside of someone’s leg and setting somewhere else, which is also not what we want.
These kinds of problems may seem a little more “arts and crafts” than “orthopedic surgery”, but they are the kind of nitty-gritty real-life real challenges that actually get in the way of healing patients’ bones.
The new solution
Biomaterial research scientists have developed an injectable hydrogel (containing all the necessary ingredients* that uses light to achieve cross-linking of bone particles and mineralization without any of the above being necessary. In again oversimplified terms: they inject the hydrogel where it’s needed, and then irradiate the site with harmless visible light which instantly sets it in place. As to how the light gets in there: it’s just very shiny, like candling an egg to see inside, or like how you can still approximately see bright light even with your eyes closed.
*alginate (natural polysaccharide derived from brown algae), RGD peptide-containing mussel** adhesive protein, calcium ions, phosphonodiols, and a photoinitiator.
**unclear whether this would trigger a shellfish allergy. Probably kosher per “פיקוח נפש” and Talmud Yoma 85b, but we are a health science newsletter, not Talmudic scholars, so please talk to your Rabbi. Probably halal per Qur’an 5:4 and failing that, the same principle as previously mentioned, expressed in Qur’an 5:3 and 6:119, but once again, your humble writer here is no Mufti, so please talk to your Imam. As for if you are vegetarian or vegan, then that is for you to decide whether to take a “medications with animal ingredients are unfortunate but necessary” stance, as most do. This vegan writer would (she’d grumble about it, though, and at least try to find an acceptable alternative first).
Back to the more general practicalities…
How it works, in less oversimplified terms:
❝The coacervate-based formulation, which is immiscible in water, ensures that the hydrogel retains its shape and position after injection into the body. Upon visible light irradiation, cross-linking occurs, and amorphous calcium phosphate, which functions as a bone graft material, is simultaneously formed. This eliminates the need for separate bone grafts or adhesives, enabling the hydrogel to provide both bone regeneration and adhesion.❞
“That’s great, but I was hoping for something I can do right now, ideally at home”
If getting glued back together was not on your bucket list, that’s understandable. There’s still a lot you can do for bone density; here’s a quick overview:
- Get it checked. Yes, this first, if you haven’t already! You want a basis for comparison later. Book a bone density scan. See for example this case study with bone density scans at each end: 21% Stronger Bones in a Year at 62? Yes, It’s Possible (No Calcium Supplements Needed!)
- Enjoy a diet rich in calcium and vitamin D yes, but be aware that you can have too much of a good thing, and doing so will result in more harm than good, including (paradoxically) for your bones. See: Vitamin D + Calcium: Too Much Of A Good Thing?
- Enjoy a diet rich is phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium, which things are also necessary for bone health, and in which people are much more likely to be deficient (especially magnesium). If you’re going to supplement, then there are very big difference in the efficacy of different kinds of magnesium supplement (brace yourself; the cheapest and most common kind barely does anything at all). See: Which Magnesium? (And: When?)
- Enjoy a diet rich in high quality protein—collagen is very useful, but if you want a plant-based approach, don’t worry, our body can and will make it for yourself if you give it a hand—and vitamin C to help its absorption, as well as glycine if you’re going the no-animals route. See: Collagen For Bones: We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of and: The Sweet Truth About Glycine: Making Your Collagen Work Better
- Consider medication, if your bone density is already lower than what it should be. There are meds to stop further deterioration, and different meds to encourage your body to rebuild bone. However, there are downsides to each of them: Which Osteoporosis Medication, If Any, Is Right For You?
- While we’re on the topic of medications, consider bioidentical HRT if you are female and not otherwise producing your own estrogen and progesterone in adequate quantities to maintain your skeletal integrity: HRT: A Tale Of Two Approaches
- Look after your gut too! So much starts there: Is Your Gut Leading You Into Osteoporosis? Bacterioides Vulgatus & Bone Health
- Lastly, exercise, but exercise right, because with insufficient resistance exercise your bones will not “think” they need to remain strong, and with the wrong kind of resistance exercise, you could break/compress your bones if they are already weak, so check out: Osteoporosis & Exercises: Which To Do (And Which To Avoid)
Too much information?
If that was too much information all at once, then we recommend this as your one-stop article:
The Bare-Bones Truth About Osteoporosis
Want more information?
We are but a humble newsletter and can only include so much per day, but we highly recommend this book we reviewed a little while back, which goes into everything in a lot more detail than we can here:
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
“You Just Need to Lose Weight” And 19 Other Myths About Fat People – by Aubrey Gordon
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
We’ve previously reviewed another book by this author, “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat”, and this time, she’s doing some important mythbusting.
The titular “you just need to lose weight” is a commonly-taken easy-out for many doctors, to avoid having to dispense actual treatment for an actual condition. Whether or not weight loss would help in a given situation is often immaterial; “kicking the can down the road” is the goal.
Most of the book is divided into 20 chapters, each of them devoted to debunking one myth. Think of it like 10almonds’ “Mythbusting Friday” edition (indeed, we did one about obesity), but with an entire book, and as much room as she needs to provide much more detail than we can ever get into in a single article.
And far from being a mere polemic, she does indeed provide that detail—this is clearly a very well-researched book, above and beyond the author’s own personal experience. Further, all the key points are illustrated and articulated clearly, making the book’s ideas very comprehensible.
The style is pop-science, but with frequent bibliographical references for relevant sources.
Bottom line: for some readers, this book will come as a great validation; for others, it may be eye-opening. Either way, it’s a very worthwhile read.
Share This Post
-
Drug companies pay doctors over A$11 million a year for travel and education. Here’s which specialties received the most
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Drug companies are paying Australian doctors millions of dollars a year to fly to overseas conferences and meetings, give talks to other doctors, and to serve on advisory boards, our research shows.
Our team analysed reports from major drug companies, in the first comprehensive analysis of its kind. We found drug companies paid more than A$33 million to doctors in the three years from late 2019 to late 2022 for these consultancies and expenses.
We know this underestimates how much drug companies pay doctors as it leaves out the most common gift – food and drink – which drug companies in Australia do not declare.
Due to COVID restrictions, the timescale we looked at included periods where doctors were likely to be travelling less and attending fewer in-person medical conferences. So we suspect current levels of drug company funding to be even higher, especially for travel.
Monster Ztudio/Shutterstock What we did and what we found
Since 2019, Medicines Australia, the trade association of the brand-name pharmaceutical industry, has published a centralised database of payments made to individual health professionals. This is the first comprehensive analysis of this database.
We downloaded the data and matched doctors’ names with listings with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra). We then looked at how many doctors per medical specialty received industry payments and how much companies paid to each specialty.
We found more than two-thirds of rheumatologists received industry payments. Rheumatologists often prescribe expensive new biologic drugs that suppress the immune system. These drugs are responsible for a substantial proportion of drug costs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).
The specialists who received the most funding as a group were cancer doctors (oncology/haematology specialists). They received over $6 million in payments.
This is unsurprising given recently approved, expensive new cancer drugs. Some of these drugs are wonderful treatment advances; others offer minimal improvement in survival or quality of life.
A 2023 study found doctors receiving industry payments were more likely to prescribe cancer treatments of low clinical value.
Our analysis found some doctors with many small payments of a few hundred dollars. There were also instances of large individual payments.
Why does all this matter?
Doctors usually believe drug company promotion does not affect them. But research tells a different story. Industry payments can affect both doctors’ own prescribing decisions and those of their colleagues.
A US study of meals provided to doctors – on average costing less than US$20 – found the more meals a doctor received, the more of the promoted drug they prescribed.
Pizza anyone? Even providing a cheap meal can influence prescribing. El Nariz/Shutterstock Another study found the more meals a doctor received from manufacturers of opioids (a class of strong painkillers), the more opioids they prescribed. Overprescribing played a key role in the opioid crisis in North America.
Overall, a substantial body of research shows industry funding affects prescribing, including for drugs that are not a first choice because of poor effectiveness, safety or cost-effectiveness.
Then there are doctors who act as “key opinion leaders” for companies. These include paid consultants who give talks to other doctors. An ex-industry employee who recruited doctors for such roles said:
Key opinion leaders were salespeople for us, and we would routinely measure the return on our investment, by tracking prescriptions before and after their presentations […] If that speaker didn’t make the impact the company was looking for, then you wouldn’t invite them back.
We know about payments to US doctors
The best available evidence on the effects of pharmaceutical industry funding on prescribing comes from the US government-run program called Open Payments.
Since 2013, all drug and device companies must report all payments over US$10 in value in any single year. Payment reports are linked to the promoted products, which allows researchers to compare doctors’ payments with their prescribing patterns.
Analysis of this data, which involves hundreds of thousands of doctors, has indisputably shown promotional payments affect prescribing.
Medical students need to know about this. LightField Studios/Shutterstock US research also shows that doctors who had studied at medical schools that banned students receiving payments and gifts from drug companies were less likely to prescribe newer and more expensive drugs with limited evidence of benefit over existing drugs.
In general, Australian medical faculties have weak or no restrictions on medical students seeing pharmaceutical sales representatives, receiving gifts, or attending industry-sponsored events during their clinical training. They also have no restrictions on academic staff holding consultancies with manufacturers whose products they feature in their teaching.
So a first step to prevent undue pharmaceutical industry influence on prescribing decisions is to shelter medical students from this influence by having stronger conflict-of-interest policies, such as those mentioned above.
A second is better guidance for individual doctors from professional organisations and regulators on the types of funding that is and is not acceptable. We believe no doctor actively involved in patient care should accept payments from a drug company for talks, international travel or consultancies.
Third, if Medicines Australia is serious about transparency, it should require companies to list all payments – including those for food and drink – and to link health professionals’ names to their Ahpra registration numbers. This is similar to the reporting standard pharmaceutical companies follow in the US and would allow a more complete and clearer picture of what’s happening in Australia.
Patients trust doctors to choose the best available treatments to meet their health needs, based on scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness. They don’t expect marketing to influence that choice.
Barbara Mintzes, Professor, School of Pharmacy and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney and Malcolm Forbes, Consultant psychiatrist and PhD candidate, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Share This Post
-
Blood-Sugar-Friendly Ice Pops
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
This generic food product has so many regional variant names that it’s difficult to get a universal name, but in N. America they’re also known by the genericized brand name of popsicles. Anyway, they’re usually very bad news for blood sugars, being merely frozen juice even if extra sugar wasn’t added. Today’s recipe, on the other hand, makes for a refreshing and nutrient-dense treat that won’t spike your blood glucose!
You will need
- 1 cup fresh blueberries
- 1 can (12oz/400g) coconut milk
- ½ cup yogurt with minimal additives
- 1 tbsp honey (omit if you prefer less sweetness)
- Juice of ¼ lime (increase if you prefer more sourness)
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Blend everything
2) Pour into ice pop molds and freeze overnight
3) Serve at your leisure:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
- 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
- Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy? ← the fats in coconut are a good source of medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs), which are easily broken down as a good energy source and (enjoyed in moderation) thus unlikely to cause any cardiovascular problems, as little to nothing (usually: nothing) of it will be stored.
Take care!
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
L-Theanine: What’s The Tea?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
L-Theanine: What’s The Tea?
We’ve touched previously on l-theanine, when this newsletter was new, and we had only a few hundred subscribers and the carefully organized format wasn’t yet what it is today.
So now it’s time to give this potent dietary compound / nutritional supplement the “Monday Research Review” treatment…
What is it?
L-theanine is an amino acid found in tea. The human body can’t produce it, and/but it’s not essential for humans. It does have a lot of benefits, though. See for example:
L-Theanine as a Functional Food Additive: Its Role in Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
How does it work?
L-theanine works by moderating and modulating the brain’s neurotransmitters.
This sounds fancy, but basically it means: it doesn’t actually add anything in the manner of a drug, but it changes how we use what we have naturally.
What does it do? Read on…
It increases mental focus
It has been believed that l-theanine requires the presence of caffeine to achieve this (i.e., it’s a combination-only effect). For example:
But as it turns out, when a group of researchers actually checked… This isn’t true, as Foxe et al. write:
❝We asked whether either compound alone, or both in combination, would affect performance of the task in terms of reduced error rates over time, and whether changes in alpha-band activity would show a relationship to such changes in performance. When treated with placebo, participants showed a rise in error rates, a pattern that is commonly observed with increasing time-on-task, whereas after caffeine and theanine ingestion, error rates were significantly reduced. The combined treatment did not confer any additional benefits over either compound alone, suggesting that the individual compounds may confer maximal benefits at the dosages employed❞
It promotes a calmly wakeful feeling of serenity
Those are not words typically found in biopharmaceutical literature, but they’re useful here to convey:
- L-theanine promotes relaxation without causing drowsiness
- L-theanine promotes mental alertness without being a stimulant
Here is where l-theanine really stands out from caffeine. If both substances promote mental focus, but one of them does it by making us “wired” and the other does it while simultaneously promoting calm, it makes the choice between them clearer!
Read more: L-theanine, a natural constituent in tea, and its effect on mental state
It relieves stress and anxiety
Building on from the above, but there’s more: l-theanine relieves stress and anxiety in people experiencing stressful situations, without any known harmful side effects… This is something that sets it apart from a lot of anxiolytic (antianxiety) drugs!
Here’s what a big systematic review of clinical trials had to say:
Theanine consumption, stress and anxiety in human clinical trials: A systematic review
L-theanine has other benefits too
We’ve talked about some of the most popular benefits of l-theanine, and we can’t make this newsletter too long, but research also suggests that it…
- Supports healthy weight management
- Reduces inflammation
- Supports immune health
- Helps fight cancer
- May extend lifespan ← this one’s a C. elegans study, but despite being a tiny worm, they actually function very similarly to humans on a cellular level; it’s why they’re used so much for anti-aging research
If you’re interested in this topic, we recommend also reading our previous article on l-theanine—pardon that we hadn’t really nailed down our style yet—but there’s a bunch of useful information about how l-theanine makes caffeine “better” in terms of benefits. We also talk dosage, and reference some other studies we didn’t have room to include today!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Walk Like You’re 20 Years Younger Again
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
How fit, healthy, strong, and mobile were you 20 years ago? For most people, the answer is “better than now”. Physiotherapist Dr. Doug Weiss has advice on turning back the clock:
The exercises
If you already have no problems walking, this one is probably not for you. However, if you’re not so able to comfortably walk as you used to be, then Dr. Weiss recommends:
- Pillow squat: putting pillow on a chair, crossing hands on chest, standing up and sitting down. Similar to the very important “getting up off the floor without using your hands” exercise, but easier.
- Wall leaning: standing against a wall with heels 4″ away from it, crossing arms over chest again, and pulling the body off the wall using the muscles in the front of the shin. Note, this means not cheating by using other muscles, leveraging the upper body, pushing off with the buttocks, or anything else like that.
- Stepping forward: well, this certainly is making good on the promise of walking like we did 20 years ago; there sure was a lot of stepping forward involved. More seriously, this is actually about stepping over some object, first with support, and then without.
- Heel raise: is what it sounds like, raising up on toes and back down again; first with support, then without.
- Side stepping: step sideways 2–3 steps in each direction. First with support, then without. Bonus: if your support is your partner, then congratulations, you are now dancing bachata.
For more details (and visual demonstration) of these exercises and more, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
4 Tips To Stand Without Using Hands
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Berberine For Metabolic Health
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Is Berberine Nature’s Ozempic/Wegovy?
Berberine is a compound found in many plants. Of which, some of them are variations of the barberry, hence the name.
It’s been popular this past couple of years, mostly for weight loss. In and of itself, something being good for weight loss doesn’t mean it’s good for the health (just ask diarrhoea, or cancer).
Happily, berberine’s mechanisms of action appear to be good for metabolic health, including:
- Reduced fasting blood sugar levels
- Improved insulin sensitivity
- Reduced LDL and triglycerides
- Increased HDL levels
So, what does the science say?
It’s (mostly!) not nature’s Wegovy/Ozempic
It’s had that title in a number of sensationalist headlines (and a current TikTok trend, apparently), but while both berberine and the popular weight-loss drugs Wegovy/Ozempic act in part on insulin metabolism, they mostly do so by completely different mechanisms.
Wegovy and Ozempic are GLP-1 agonists, which mean they augment the action of glucagon-like-peptide 1, which increases insulin release, decreases glucagon release, and promotes a more lasting feeling of fullness.
Berberine works mostly by other means, not all of which are understood. But, we know that it activates AMP-activated protein kinase, and on the flipside, inhibits proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9.
In less arcane words: it boosts some enzymes and inhibits others.
Each of these boosts/inhibitions has a positive effect on metabolic health.
However, it does also have a slight GLP-1 agonist effect too! Bacteria in the gut can decompose and metabolize berberine into dihydroberberine, thus preventing the absorption of disaccharides in the intestinal tract, and increasing GLP-1 levels.
See: Effects of Berberine on the Gastrointestinal Microbiota
Does it work for weight loss?
Yes, simply put. And if we’re going to put it head-to-head with Wegovy/Ozempic, it works about half as well. Which sounds like a criticism, but for a substance that’s a lot safer (and cheaper, and easier—if we like capsules over injections) and has fewer side effects.
- Weight Loss Outcomes Associated With Semaglutide Treatment for Patients With Overweight or Obesity ← Wegovy and Ozempic are both brand names of semaglutide
- The effect of berberine supplementation on obesity parameters: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials ← a good recent research review giving clear data on many factors
- Lipid-lowering effect of berberine in human subjects and rats ← this is an older study, 2012, but it gives 3-month weight loss percentages rather than discrete values in the abstract, so it’s easier to compare to the semaglutide study without grabbing a calculator
❝But more interestingly, the treatment significantly reduced blood lipid levels (23% decrease of triglyceride and 12.2% decrease of cholesterol levels) in human subjects.
However, there was interestingly, an increase in calcitriol levels seen in all human subjects following berberine treatment (mean 59.5% increase)
Collectively, this study demonstrates that berberine is a potent lipid-lowering compound with a moderate weight loss effect, and may have a possible potential role in osteoporosis treatment/prevention.❞
(click through to read in full)
Is it safe?
It appears to be, with one special caveat: remember that paper about the effects of berberine on the gastrointestinal microbiota? It also has some antimicrobial effects, so you could do harm there if not careful. It’s recommended to give it a break every couple of months, to be sure of allowing your gut microbiota to not get too depleted.
Also, as with anything you might take that’s new, always consult your doctor/pharmacist in case of contraindications based on medications you are taking.
Where can I get it?
As ever, we don’t sell it, but you can check out the berberine of one of our sponsors if you like, or else find one of your choosing online; here’s an example product on Amazon, for your convenience.
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
