Osteoporosis Medications - A Horror Story

Baby-boomers retire looking forward to living at least fifteen or twenty more active years--to living the good life. We've taken care of ourselves, but commercials tell us we need help in maintaining bone health. It is recommended we ask our doctors for a prescription, billed as "something we can do for us." A lot of us will "do" diligently but not think to perform due-diligence in checking out drugs prescribed to us. This extremely-popular "therapeutic" regimen could prove to be our generation?s undoing. It is already affecting some of us and our parents without our realizing it.

This detrimental regimen is prescription bone-replacement therapy, under the names Fosamax (Merck), Actonel, Evista, and Boniva, to name a few. Dutiful post-menopausal females and aging men submit to a painless bone-density test that may show a little bone loss. Your doctor will be more than happy to prescribe a bone-replacement drug - often one that a pharmaceutical company has contracted with him to prescribe.

My accidental Google discovery revealed what countless victims already know: the side effects of biophosphonates are life-altering and dire. These drugs cannot generate actual bone. The artificial cells they produce show up as human bone on MRIs, bone scans and x-rays, but don't actually add strength to the bones they seed. Bones may actually become more susceptible to fracture and compression on this therapy. In particular, lower jaw weakness can result in tooth loss, teeth that break off at the gum line or, in the worse cases, death of the lower jaw itself, or jaw osteonecrosis.

Other side effects include a permanent flu-like feeling, high blood pressure, stroke, massive digestive disturbance, gastro-intestinal problems, a rise in eyeball pressure - the list goes on and on and on. But, it's the debilitating pain reported by patients that's most disturbing. Jaw, bone, joint, back, hip and muscle pain associated with biophosphonates is often disregarded by doctors as simply "old-age." I have witnessed my mother's decline, her last five years in ever-worsening pain that has became extremely resistant to even the strongest pain killers. Not a single health-care professional (and we've seen many in search of relief) volunteered the possibility that her condition could be caused by the Actonel she took once a week for ten years. When I confronted her doctors, they said yes, biophosphonates can cause bone pain, but none would go so far as to say that it was Actonel that is killing her.

Research bone replacement drugs before you start or take your next dose. My mother had three strokes and was hospitalized for a week on her "Actonel day" right before last Christmas. Her destruction is now almost complete. She can no longer walk at all. If you have deep pain, acid reflux, "the flu" all the time, indigestion, a sudden inability to digest dairy products, or other phantom symptoms and are on a daily, weekly, monthly or now annual bone replacement regimen, STOP and contact your pharmacist for more information. It is too late for my mother, but it may not be too late for you.

- Ann O. (Bella Vista, Arkansas)

Thank you, Ann, for relating your and your mother's experience. I know you want to help others avoid the pain your mother has been going through. Osteoporosis medications and their side effects definitely need to be understood by people. Hopefully more will decide to take a more natural route for treatment and even prevention.