A diet high in saturated fats may lead not only to obesity and heart disease
but also to osteoporosis.
Mice fed a high-fat, high cholesterol diet for seven months lost very large
amounts of minerals from their bones, as well as 15 percent of the bone from
their hind legs, a team at the University of California, Los Angeles,
reported recently. Previously, the same research team had found that mice
fed the high-fat diet, which raises their cholesterol, had many fewer
bone-forming cells than mice in a normal diet, suggesting that high
cholesterol may decrease overall bone production. According to some
workers, since the structures of bone and artery are very similar,
osteoporosis and heart disease may both be caused by an inflammatory response
in the body, associated with high cholesterol levels.
In this respect, however, we need to note that elevation of cholesterol
levels may not simply be associated with intake of saturated fats, but also
with other factors, such as the ingestion of refined carbohydrates. It would
be interesting to ascertain if the incidence of osteoporosis is also
associated with very elevated calorie intakes, irrespective of source.
Here is an abstract of the paper from which this information was derived:
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Parhami F, Garfinkel A & Demer LL Role of lipids in osteoporosis.
Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol 2000 Nov; 20(11):2346-8
Cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis together account for most of the
morbidity and mortality in our aging
population despite significant improvements in treatment. Recently,
converging lines of evidence suggest that
these 2 diseases share an etiologic factor -that hyperlipidemia contributes
not only to atherosclerotic plaque
formation, but also to osteoporosis, following a similar biologic mechanism
involving lipid oxidation. In vitro
studies indicate that lipid products of oxidation promote osteoblastic
differentiation of vascular cells and inhibit
such differentiation in bone cells. Ex vivo, in vivo, and clinical studies
further suggest that lipid-lowering
agents reduce both atherosclerotic calcification and osteoporosis. Whether
lipid-lowering agents reduce
osteoporosis directly or indirectly through lipid reduction remains
controversial.
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Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
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http://www.egroups.com/group/supertraining
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