FDA Approves Stupid Bone-Killing Osteoporosis Medication
Oh, FDA. You hurt me so much sometimes. Just when I start to think you might be getting your act together by actually investigating a gigantic egg recall, you poop the proverbial bed and approve a drug that is just plain stupid.
What, you may ask, have they approved that makes me weep in utter disappointment? It’s an osteoporosis medication designed to combat bone loss, that ends up destroying bone. Brilliant. Because we didn’t learn our lesson with Fossamax, which does pretty much the same thing.
Here’s the basic idea behind the medication, which on the surface, might sound reasonable. Since osteoporosis is basically a condition of weak bones, it stands to reason that anything that prevents bones from becoming weaker would stop osteoporosis, right?
That’s what Big Pharma thought. So, they created a drug that prevents the natural breakdown of bone by your body.
Wait, what? Your body breaks down bone? That’s right. In fact, your bones are constantly being broken down and rebuilt. The biggest mistake people make when it comes to bone is to think of bone as a dead, dry chunk of rock that sits inside of you.
Maybe that incorrect notion comes from people seeing dead, dried out bones lying on the ground or in a museum. But living bone is very vibrant, dynamic tissue that dramatically changes due to the stresses put on it.
As a result, the body constantly breaks bone down and rebuilds it as is necessary. Old, decaying bone is cleared out, and new bone is put back in. The balance of this breaking down (called osteoclastic) and building up (osteoblastic) is how strong your bones are.
Again, the theory behind Fossamax or this new drug is, that if we stop the breaking down process, why, then there will be only building up of bone! We’re geniuses! Osteoporosis= solved!
Not so much. Here’s the problem. The reason why that old and decayed bone was being broken down and cleared out in the first place is that the old bone was OLD AND DECAYED. So now, rather than removing the old, worn-out, useless stuff so that you can put in brand new stuff, you’re stuck with the old worn-out stuff.
Are we starting to see the flaw in the logic? Your skin is also constantly renewing itself; old dead skin cells fall off and are replaced by new skin cells. Could you imagine if we forced the body to never slough off dead skin cells? We’d all have skin like elephants in no time flat!
This breaking down and building up process is crucial to the normal operation of our body. Any time somebody comes along and thinks they’re going to outsmart human physiology and mess with that normal operation, something inevitably goes horribly, horribly wrong.
In the case of Fossamax and similar drugs, one of the big problems is bone death, called osteonecrosis (which means “bone death”, literally. I’m just going to stick with plain, non-Latin “bone death”). It often occurs in the jaw… we’re not sure why. My guess is, it’s because the jaw is under very surprising amounts of stress on a regular basis (really, we can bite harder than we think) and therefore is probably undergoing a lot more dynamic breakdown-buildup action than other bones.
The point is, people on these kinds of drugs basically have a part of their jaw rot out. Awesome. But I bet you understand why, having read this article and not having billions of dollars in potential profit at stake. However, when you DO have billions of dollars in potential profit at stake, you tend to overlook little details like physiology and people’s jaws falling off.
You want to combat osteoporosis? Read this article about the basics. There’s some very simple preventative measures, mostly involving terribly invasive things like exercise and avoiding sugar. But hey, it’s better than the lower half of your face falling off.
Avoid the crazy drugs and stay healthy!