How stressful! And while I don't have a lot of personal experience with osteoporosis, I recommend taking a vitamin D3 supplement as well as incorporating weight training.
As far as I know (from all my reading about diet-related stuff),
it's vitamin D-3 that ensures calcium gets into our bones and not into our bloodstream. The typical calcium/vitamin D type supplement contains vitamin D2, which doesn't really help in terms of making sure that the extra calcium you're taking or eating gets into your bones. This is particularly important if you rarely get any sun or happen live in an area where there's not much sun throughout the year. Vitamin D-3 is very important, and it is usually taken as a separate supplement (looks a bit like a fish oil capsule) as opposed to a typical "cal-mag-d" vitamin pill. If you live in the North or just don't get outside in the sun much, you might need to take vitamin D-3 supplements.
I take these from Costco:
http://www.costco.com/trunatur.....02692.htmlI don't know if you have time for this, but if at all possible, you might want to join the local Y or rec center, and get a personal trainer to set you up with a good weight-training routine. Sign up for two weeks of instruction, and if you're not the gym-going type, ask that the trainer give you routines that you can do at home.
In terms of upping calcium, or any other nutrient, I'm a fan of the World's Healthiest Foods website - where you can sort through and find which foods are highest in a particular nutrient.
Here's their blurb on calcium (excellent article, and well worth the read):
http://whfoods.org/calcium/It's important to remember that without adequate vitamin D-3 levels, all the calcium in the world isn't going to do a lick of good. Also, it's not just dairy foods that are high in calcium - leafy greens, sardines and even sesame seeds are very high in calcium.
You might want to have your doctor check your vitamin D-3 levels to help you determine if you need extra vitamin D.
Further, hopefully your doctor will look also into parathyroid function.
Here's more stuff on those vitamin D tests:
http://labtestsonline.org/unde.....d/tab/testAs far as I can tell, the parathyroid converts d-25 to d-125, If parathryoid isn't working, then the conversion isn't going to happen properly. As far as I can tell,
sometimes the body will leach calcium out of bones to keep blood calcium levels normalized. I think this might happen if your body isn't able to absorb nutrients properly? This is a whole other ball of wax, in that perhaps something might be interefering with your body's ability to absorb calcium and/or other nutrients (ie. celiac, food sensitivities, digestive issues, etc.)
Beyond this, I have no idea. I don't know what needs to happen to fix parathyroid if this is an issue.
Please take all of this with a giant grain of salt, since it's just coming from a layperson who has done some light reading here and there on the topic of nutrition. I do know that vitamin D3 is very important and that you might want to get it tested, and that maybe you want to have your endocrinologist test for parathyroid issues, but beyond that, I'm not really sure.
Hang in there - I am *sure* that this can be fixed. In the meantime, I'm sending over some sardines
(kidding!)
