How to Treat Paget's Disease Naturally

How to Treat Paget's Disease Naturally

There is new hope today for victims of Paget's disease, a painful degeneration of the bones. Doctors don't know what causes Paget's disease, although it sometimes runs in families. Any bone in the body may be affected, but the most common sites are the long bones of the legs, the lower spine, the pelvis and the skull. In the early stages of the disease, calcium is removed from the bones, softening them. In later stages, the bones begin to grow again. But, somehow, the new growth is distorted. The bones remain soft and become abnormally thick.

Deep, dull, aching bone pain is one of the symptoms. If the deformity is in the skull, headache may occur. Deafness and blindness can also result if a deformed bone in the skull presses on a nerve. When leg bones are affected, the legs become bowed under the weight of the body.

Until a few years ago, there was no effective treatment for Paget's disease, although doctors tried several drugs and therapies. Then it was discovered that calcitonin, a hormone secreted by the thyroid gland, relieved pain when given by injection. Unfortunately, the treatment is extremely expensive, and the drug also produces nausea in many people and may be the cause of allergic reactions.

However, now a safe, effective, low-cost treatment for Paget's disease has been developed by an Australian physician. Dr. R. A. Evans, of the Repatriation General Hospital in New South Wales, has successfully used calcium supplements and a combination of medications designed to keep blood levels of calcium high in nine sufferers of Paget's disease.

Searching for an alternative to expensive, hazardous drug treatment, Dr. Evans decided to try to raise the blood level of calcium in people with the disease. To do this, he gave them from 500 to 1000 mg of calcium three times a day between meals, an antacid tablet with meals to keep phosphorus from interfering with calcium absorption, and a drug to keep calcium from being excreted in the urine. The treatment went on for 200 days.
In Dr. Evans's words,

The bone pain subsided or was considerably reduced in eight of the nine patients after a period of 20 to 70 days... Two female patients who were invalids prior to commencing therapy were able to return to light household duties. There were no serious side-effects.

Dr. Evans believes that the treatment works by stimulating the body's natural secretion of calcitonin, which the thyroid gland secretes when blood levels of calcium rise. Biochemical tests performed by Dr. Evans confirmed that his patients were not merely experiencing a 'placebo response' to the treatment.

He went on to say that :

The regimen described here costs approximately 2 percent [of the usual drug treatment] and can be made still cheaper by the use of simpler forms of the drugs... In view of the extremely low cost of this drug combination and its lack of side-effects, it is suggested it be considered as a treatment of Paget's disease of bone. [Australian and New Zealand Journal of Medicine].