Vegetarians Have Healthy Bones Despite Low Bone Mass

Vegetarians Have Healthy Bones Despite Low Bone Mass - CME Teaching Brief - MedPage Today: "ST. LOUIS-Vegans who subsist only on raw foods suffer from low bone mass, yet their bones may be healthy because they lack the other biological signs for osteoporosis.

That's the paradoxical conclusion from a small study published in the March 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. It found that while vegans had below-normal bone mass in critical areas like the hip and lumbar spine, they had sufficient vitamin D levels.

Researchers led by Luigi Fontana, M.D., Ph.D., of Washington University here looked at 18 men and women, ages 33 to 85, who had maintained a vegan lifestyle for an average of 3.6 years. They were compared with a matched group of 18 controls who ate a standard American diet containing animal fat and processed foods. "