Free Healing Through Exercise: Scientifically Proven Ways to Prevent and Overcome Illness and Lengthen Your Life by Jörg Blech Page A

dramatically underdiagnosed. In the United States, 3 to 5 percent of the population is allegedly affected, mostly women. The patients suffer from fatigue, low muscle strength, insomnia, headaches, and a lack of attentiveness. These symptoms might mean that the affected people need exercise. But it is also conceivable that this feebleness is a consequence of the disease. Fibromyalgia is diagnosed on the basis of 18 so-called tender points on the body. These points cannot be recognized anatomically but apparently hurt a little bit when you press on them.

    The therapy options for fibromyalgia appear as arbitrary as the cause is mysterious. In Europe, some doctors put their patients in a warm mud bath, others try a medical cold chamber, but neither approach seems to work. Yet one treatment is emerging: in four studies looking into the effects of endurance training, physical exercise appears to allay the symptoms appreciably. As the fitness became better, the unusual fibromyalgia pain eased. Apparently, getting active helps the patients overcome their sickness because the newly gained muscle strength chases off fatigue, reduces pain, and helps patients handle their daily routine again—thus lifting up their spirits. 14

INACTIVITY AND OSTEOPOROSIS

    Of all women age 50 or older, about 20 percent are said to have fragile bones. This statement is based upon bone densitometry, a procedure that pharmaceutical companies, medical instrument-makers, and some pharmacists and gynecologists recommend.

    The densitometry is usually carried out through X-rays. The denser the bone tissue, the more the X-rays are attenuated, which can be analyzed with a computer. The results are then compared to the standard bone density of a healthy 35-year-old human. An individual is said to have osteoporosis when her or his readings are 20 to 35 percent below an arbitrary threshold value (which equals 2.5 or more so-called standard deviations under the norm). This measuring system produces results that—if universally applied—would turn the vast majority of older people into osteoporosis patients—and at the same time into consumers for drugs that allegedly increase the density of the bones.

    This whole concept would be a great idea, if it reached the actual goal: cutting down the number of broken bones. Alas, there is no reason to believe that that would be the case. Day after day, older people suffer from fractures—even when their bone density measurements produce perfectly normal values. Fifty to 70 percent of the osteoporosis-like fractures actually occur in women showing only a small deficiency in bone density. 17

    There is an abundance of studies indicating that women who participate in bone densitometries do not benefit at all. Researchers in Sweden, Germany, and the United States have come to this conclusion in independent trials. Over ten years ago experts at the British Columbia Office of Health Technology Assessment, in Vancouver, presented a thorough report on the question of whether diagnosing osteoporosis makes sense at all. Their conclusion: “Research evidence does not support either whole population or selective bone mineral density (BMD) testing of well women at or near menopause as a means to predict future fractures.” 18 Consequently, health providers in countries like Germany have stopped paying for this useless procedure.

    Drugs for osteoporosis have been shown to have no noteworthy clinical effect. The blockbuster is a substance called Alendronate, with annual sales of about $3 billion. The product’s molecules migrate into the bone tissue and raise its density. In one study, women with an average age of 68 took the drug for four years, and the risk of hip fractures was allegedly reduced by 56 percent. 19

    Yet the American physician and author John Abramson took a closer look at the study; he was curious about what this number actually meant. 20 How many fractures of the hip were actually averted? The older participants