★★★★★
Quick bone healing in elderly lady.
Several years ago I had occasion to advise a woman in her 70s about calcium absorption. She was formerly a professional dancer and teacher of dance. I had not seen her for some time until I saw her in March 1998 at a meeting where she was in a wheelchair. When I asked what happened she told me that four months before that she had been in a bad auto accident causing multiple fractures of her right tibia (shin bone) just below the knee. She was still in a wheelchair because according to her doctor her fractures were healing very slowly or not at all, and she found it extremely painful and difficult to move her leg and she could not put any weight on it.
I asked if she was taking supplemental calcium, and she said she had been taking about 1,000 to 1,200 mg per day. I advised her to cut down to no more than 400 mg of calcium per day and to take at least as much magnesium. I asked if she was taking horsetail, an herbal (plant) source of silica. She said she had not heard of horsetail, and was not taking any silica supplement. I suggested that she begin taking horsetail, as it is high in an easily absorbed form of silica (Ionic forms of mineral silica are also absorbable), and low in calcium, and is available inexpensively through health food stores and pharmacies. I advised her to take about six capsules daily with meals, as recommended on the bottle (about 2,640 mg of horsetail per day). I explained to her briefly why that might be helpful, and how it might also reduce the pain in her tibia.
I talked to her a week later and asked how she was doing. She said for the past week her recovery was like "a miracle every day"; that her tibia was rapidly improving, the pain was less, she was finally gaining mobility, and she was able to start putting weight on her right leg by standing. She told me that she had followed my advice and bought some horsetail the day I talked to her and had taken it daily for the past week as recommended, and that she had also cut her calcium intake down to about 400 mg per day, and was taking 400 mg of magnesium per day. She continued this regimen.
Within about two weeks she was out of her wheelchair and walking short distances using a walker, and she continued to make rapid improvement. Five weeks later she was walking with the aid of only a four-pronged cane, and six weeks later she was walking without assistance and got a car and began driving again. She said her doctors told her that her x-rays showed rapid healing of her bone after the time she started taking the horsetail and magnesium, and reduced her calcium intake. In contrast to her despair about her condition when I first talked to her, she was in a very positive mood each time I talked to her after she changed her regimen.
- Reduce calcium supplement to less than 400mg per day
- Take 400mg of magnesium malate per day (plus mag oil topically would be very good)
- Take 2,640mg+ of Horsetail per day for high SILICA content.
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Complete wrist fracture healing in 5 weeks?
Another example is an eighty-one-year-old woman who fell and fractured her wrist in July 2000. Two months later it was not healing well, so in September I advised her to take supplemental horsetail. She took two capsules of the herb three times per day for a week, then one capsule three times per day. Five weeks later her doctors reported that her x-rays showed complete healing.
Every one of the approximately six persons with similar problems to whom I have given the same advice to take horsetail and in some cases to take magnesium and reduce calcium intake has experienced the same rapid healing of bone fractures after a long period of very slow healing or no healing. In one case the orthopedist treating the patient used the word "miracle" to describe the sudden appearance of rapid healing that began after the patient started taking horsetail, as confirmed by her x-rays. That patient was a 24-year-old woman with a congenital estrogen deficiency whose badly fractured tibia had not healed at all in the two months before she started taking the horsetail. Her estrogen deficiency caused scoliosis when she was a teenager for which she had a steel rod placed in her back
In several of these anecdotal reports we have additional scientific support because four of the women served as their own controls - that is, they had an actual prior experience of healing very slowly or not at all, as well as experiencing significant pain before starting to take horsetail, and thereafter they experienced rapid healing and cessation of pain (I had not advised them to expect the pain to go away).
What is remarkable about these anecdotes is that in each case they match the results of controlled scientific tests of the effects of vegetal silica (horsetail) in healing broken bones of animals - that is, rapid healing of bone in those given horsetail, but very slow healing in those given calcium.
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Silica heals bones
In studies on silica and bone formation by Dr. Louis Kervran, the femurs of rats were broken. X-rays show very rapid healing effects of horsetail(high in silica) on the broken bones just 10 and 17 days after the break, and the very slow rate of healing in control rats who received only calcium. In the rats receiving horsetail, after just 17 days (10 days in one rat) the area where the bone was broken was completely healed and actually more solid than the rest of the bone, whereas in those receiving calcium the healing was just beginning. (Sociologist and anthropologist Wolf-Dieter Storl PhD comments this experiment saying, Horsetail tea is more effective for people with brittle bones than milk.)
From: http://www.healingteethnaturally.com/biological-transmutation-calcium-from-horsetail-silica.html
Horsetail
★★★★★
I would take:
- Horsetail - 6 capsules daily with meals (about 2,640 mg of horsetail per day)
- Magnesium malate - 200mg x2 per day.
- a good Multi-vitamin (like garden in life)
- Lower calcium intake to 400mg or less
- avoid all dairy (Countries with the highest dairy consumption also have the highest rates of osteoporosis.)
This is interesting too...
Here's a study that shows bone density increase by 11% in 9 months! :)
They supplemented daily with a multi-vitamin which included?
-500 mg of calcium (citrate) (400mg maybe better)
-600 mg of magnesium.
-vitamin C,
-B vitamins complex,
-vitamins A,
-D3,
-E,
-zinc,
-iron,
-copper,
-manganese,
-boron,
-iodine,
-selenium,
-chromium,
(silica, strontium, and vitamin K has also been found to increase bone strength and may be helpful to include)
A very different approach to osteoporosis was taken by Guy E. Abraham, M.D., and H. Grewel who conducted a study using magnesium therapy in 26 postmenopausal women, all of whom were taking estrogen or estrogen and a progestogen. The women were given dietary advice to (1) avoid processed foods, (2) limit protein intake and emphasize vegetable protein over animal protein, and (3) limit the consumption of refined sugar, salt, alcohol, coffee, tea, chocolate, and tobacco. Each was offered a daily supplement containing 500 mg of calcium (citrate) and 600 mg of magnesium (oxide). The supplement also contained vitamin C, ten B vitamins, vitamins A, D3, and E, zinc, iron, copper, manganese, boron, iodine, selenium, chromium, and other nutrients. Nineteen women took the supplement while seven did not. Bone density studies were performed on the calcaneous (heel) bone, both before and an average of 9 months (range 6 - 12 months) after treatment was begun. In the women who did not take the supplement, average bone density increased slightly, by 0.7%. However, in those who did take the supplement, the results were dramatically better?an average increase in bone density of 11%, a 16-fold greater improvement.12 This study was relatively small and brief, and did not attempt to measure the incidence of hip or other fractures. However, the results were much more favorable than the results of the many calcium studies in postmenopausal women, which often do not report increased bone density from taking high levels of calcium, but rather a slowing of the loss of bone, or increases in bone density of no more than 2 or 3% per year. Here with dietary changes and the use of a 500 mg calcium supplement (~42% of the RDA), and a 600 mg magnesium supplement (~200% of the RDA for women), and other nutrients, an impressive 11% increase in bone density was achieved in only nine months. This study is consistent with research studies showing that various other minerals and vitamins have a beneficial effect upon formation of strong bones, including magnesium, silicon, zinc, copper, strontium, manganese, boron, fluorine, vitamin C, bioflavonoids, B vitamins, vitamin D, vitamin K, and other nutrients, although the study design did not allow a determination of the role of any single nutrient in bringing about such positive results. The role of magnesium and other nutrients will be discussed further in Part 2 of this article. (In his study, Dr. Abraham did not use silicon, strontium, or vitamin K, each of which has also been found to increase bone strength).
