Osteoporosis Reversed: Chinese Remedy

Osteoporosis happens when bones break down faster than your body can rebuild them.

No medical solution for this exists.

That is until now that a new study in ACS Central Science tested an old Chinese remedy and managed to stop osteoporosis bones from breaking down.

The researchers extracted all the chemicals from a plant known as female ginseng, or Angelica sinensis. This plant has long been used in traditional Chinese medicine for its bone-strengthening properties.

In the process, they identified two new compounds named falcarinphthalide A and B.

They didn’t just discover the new compounds, but also worked out their unique structures and the method through which the plant made them. This knowledge enabled them to recreate these compounds in the laboratory.

Once they had done that, they tested the chemicals on different bone cells inside a human model.

The results were encouraging. Falcarinphthalide A, along with its precursors, demonstrated an ability to inhibit the activity of osteoclasts, effectively reducing bone loss.

Osteoclasts are cells that break down bone tissue. This is normal. Our bodies should break down old bone before they can make new, stronger bone with new calcium.

But in people with osteoporosis, these osteoclasts break down bone faster than new bone can be built by different cells called osteoblasts.

That’s why this study, with its discovery that falcarinphthalide A can block the activity of osteoclasts, is so important. It shows that this compound in female ginseng has the potential to treat osteoporosis.

The scientists also discovered the exact pathway through which this compound works. It basically blocks a molecular pathway through which osteoclasts are formed.

In some ways, the form of this study isn’t ideal, because it reproduced this plant compound in the laboratory. Fair enough, most of our healthy vitamins and minerals are also manufactured rather than extracted from plants.

The risk with artificially manufacturing drugs is that researchers always start adding or subtracting substances from them to strengthen their potency, and that’s often where drugs start to have side effects or unintended harmful consequences.

We will still have to see whether this discovery can yield something approximately natural and unchanged from the natural plant form. Taking female ginseng, or Angelica sinensis, in supplement form probably won’t be enough to heal osteoporosis, as the dose of the specific compound will be too low.

The real benefit from this study is therefore to prove that osteoporosis can be healed naturally. Thousands of readers have done just that using the simple lifestyle changes explained here…