For some reason I was awake and listening to the
People's Pharmacy on KERA 6am Saturday morning. I hardly ever listen to this show in part for the obvious reason, but I felt fortunate to listen to
this one. It was on bone vitality. The first guest was medical journalist Michael Castleman who with a coauthor recently came out with the book
Building Bone Vitality: A Revolutionary Diet Plan to Prevent Bone Loss and Reverse Osteoporosis.
At least in the radio show, Castleman's main point was that taking calcium supplements Or drinking alot of milk has not been shown to make much of a difference in bone vitality. Rather, a diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables plus exercise is the best prescription for maintaining strong bones. The reason is that there are other nutrients besides calcium that are necessary for bone health (I think manganese and phosphorus were a couple mentioned), and one gets these from fruits and vegetables.
Also pointed out was that a diet high in animal protein causes the blood to become acidic, and this causes calcium to come from the bones to maintain a ph balance in the blood. I first read about protein leeching calcium from the bones 20 years ago during the early days of my vegetarian period. Perhaps this view is gaining traction.
The second guest on the show was
Walter Willett, MD, DrPH, and a chairman of the nutrition department at Harvard's school of public health. He was of course more politically non-committal about Castleman's claims, particularly about animal protein, but he didn't refute Castleman's calcium claim. He was behind a diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables. What nutritionist wouldn't be?
One small negative about the show is that Joe Graedon, one of the show's hosts, seemed to distance himself from Castleman's protein claim ("it's out there") when talking with Willett. Yet when he and his wife Terry were talking to Castleman earlier, there wasn't any skepticism expressed on either hosts' part. A little two-faced I thought.
