Osteoporosis Caused By These Common Pain Killers

You can get them over the counter. They’re generally considered safe and you can buy them as pills or as gels, creams, sprays, and pads.

And, according to a new study in JAMA Dermatology, they break down your bones and cause or worsen your osteoporosis.

Topical corticosteroids have become popular for the treatment of eczema, psoriasis, contact dermatitis, or insect bites that itch.

They are divided into very high, high, medium, and low potency. The former two are available only on prescription.

A team of scientists from a variety of Danish medical research institutions noticed that corticosteroids that were taken in pill form or inhaled caused osteoporosis and bone fractures because, if taken continuously in high doses, they caused bones to break down faster than they could be rebuild.

In response, they wondered whether the topical corticosteroids that we apply to our skins had the same effect and set out to investigate this.

They collected the information of 723,251 Danish adults who had filled prescriptions for at least 200 grams of potent or very potent topical corticosteroids between 2003 and 2017.

They considered them to be exposed to regular-potency or high-potency topical corticosteroids if they had filled prescriptions for at least 500 grams. Those with smaller prescriptions were used as a comparison group.

After crunching the numbers, they discovered that regular use of potent and very potent topical corticosteroids was indeed related to a higher risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures. Moreover, the higher the doses, the higher the risks.

Roughly speaking, the subjects’ risk of both increased by between three and four percent with every doubling of topical corticosteroid dose.

For example, their risk of bone fractures was one percent with a dose between 500 and 999 grams, five percent for 1,000 to 1,999 grams, 10 percent for 2,000 to 9,999 grams, and 27 percent for a dose above 10,000 grams.

Therefore, high doses of potent or very potent topical corticosteroids increases our risk of osteoporosis or bone fractures related to osteoporosis.

So if you’re already suffering osteoporosis you absolutely must avoid corticosteroids as they will make your condition even worse.

But the most important thing is of course to strengthen your bones and heal your osteoporosis for good. Thousands of readers have done just that following the simple steps explained here…