GEORGINA THE GOAT
A Goat Shows a Cure for Osteoporosis
A goat was cured a while ago, and this is how it took place. The goat, named Georgina, was suffering from very crooked legs. When she walked, her knees pivoted around alarmingly. It was hard to look at her moving about.
Her owner had worked out from the literature Georgina's problem was due to overly long suckling, way beyond weaning time. Thus the connection was made between high milk intake and malformed legs. But why, was another question. Neither vet nor doctor had been able to fix the problem with drugs.
What happens when a young goat receives excess milk? One sure thing is a high calcium intake. That in itself is O.K, the body can use a lot of calcium. This precious alkaline mineral is used for every cell of the body, not only for its alkalising property but also for its basic functions along the cell membrane. These functions are at least as important as its structural role for the bones themselves.
The hitch with a high calcium intake is the increased requirement for vitamin D. This vitamin in its active form, D3, is required to pull calcium molecules from the gut, into the blood stream via the gut wall. In other words, vitamin D is the only way to get calcium absorbed. Calcium cannot enter the body and its tissues without the help of vitamin D in the body.
Georgina the goat ran out of vitamin D a long time ago. With the calcium keeping coming from the milk, she started to withdraw vitamin D from elsewhere in the body, from her own tissues due to the demands of the calcium. She created a serious deficiency of vitamin D, an acute deficit.
Not only did she create a deficit of the vitamin, but as a consequence she created a deficiency of calcium as well. Calcium was present abundantly, in her food, but was not absorbed and left via the kidneys. She suffered, in other words, from a bad case of rickets. Inflicted by high calcium intake.
When the goat was put on a good ration of sunflower seed, full of vitamin D, her condition rapidly improved. After two weeks, absorbable coral calcium was added for a short while to get the calcium levels back to normal.
Georgina is fine now; her condition was turned around in a couple of weeks, after which she kept improving. But as well as this, an insight into the human can be drawn from her case. We are often taking Ca supplements, and the question is then, are we having a matching vitamin D supply to cover the calcium intake? If we don’t, we are better not to overdo the calcium supplementation.
An example is the regime especially older people follow with a low fat, high calcium intake. Fat is the only medium that carries vitamin D – it is a fat-soluble vitamin. Fat is the way to give us our vitamin D. A low fat diet deprives us of this highly needed vitamin. If fat is a requirement, then people who, on a low fat diet, add a calcium supplement, create a Georgina for themselves. The calcium in the bones will be less than it was before the calcium supplement was taken! The dreadful truth from this is that older people on a low fat/high calcium diet give themselves osteoporosis, osteomalacia and arthritis, due to lack of calcium absorption.
How do we get our best vitamin D to ensure proper calcium uptake? Sunlight is first. Sunlight on fatty substance under the skin turns this into vitamin D, which itself is a fatty substance. It is far more dangerous to sty out of sunlight for fear of skin cancer - for which a lot of factors are involved. Vitamin D is in fact needed to fight cancer.
Food is the other source of vitamin D, such as in fats, and in carrots, and a little in many other vegetables. Nuts and seeds are good for fats, and so are butter, olives and avocado. As a supplement, cod liver oil in capsules has excellent vitamins A and D. Fish oil, combined with antioxidants, has good health benefits. A word of caution on the fish oil capsules: the capsules should be transparent and not enterically coated with a solid colour like white. If enterically coated, the capsules pass through the stomach without opening, then arrives in gut. Oil should, naturally, be exposed to processes in the stomach before it reaches the gut, or gut problems can develop over time.
Sunlight plays another role with regard to bones besides vitamin D production. Sunlight on the retina of the eye is a requirement for the proper function of the pineal gland, to make melatonin. Melatonin hormone is the master hormone directing the hormones in the body. This includes a major hormone that regulates deposition of calcium into bones, and another that pulls calcium from bones to keep the blood levels of calcium happy. Sunlight, full spectrum, no glasses on, needs to fall on the retina for basic regulation of life. Sunlight is very important for bones.
There are safe and very unsafe fats all around us. When fats are chosen in the diet it is extremely important to use only good quality fats. Hydrolised fats in margarine, cheap fats in processed foods like pizzas, and reused fats in fish and chips are the ones that hive fats the bad name. Stick with the natural, unheated fats: butter, cream, nuts and seeds, fat on organic meat.
In conclusion, it becomes clear that the more natural we eat, the less trouble we get. The example here is making vitamin D a prerequisite before we ingest high calcium foods, as highlighted by the events with the goat. The low fat diets and lack of light (seen by some as food) are part of our present lifestyle and have brought us deep trouble - but trouble that can easily be fixed.