The important information that vegetarian women suffer more hip fractures may be related to a fact I have observed about vegetarian women: even my super-fit gym friends have very wrinkled skin.
I believe that the connecting factor (pun intended) between these seemingly unrelated facts is collagen.
Osteoporosis is usually related to the mineral (hydroxyapatite, calcium phosphate) part of bones. This is easy to see because it appears on X-rays. Many, but not all, vegetarian diets omit dairy products and are low calcium. This is an important reason for loss of calcium from the bones over the years.
Doctors usually ignore the fact that bone mass is 60% calcium phosphate (rigid) and 40% collagen (protein, resilient). The collagen doesn’t show up on X-rays so it’s easy to ignore.
Collagen is strong because it contains a relatively rare amino acid, proline. While proline is synthesized from glutamate in our bodies when we are young, the synthesis process declines with age. Then proline becomes an essential amino acid which must be eaten.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid
A vegetarian diet is low in proline. Animals are mostly squishy, soft cells. Our strong components are bones and collagen (tendons, ligaments, cartilage). Plants do not have collagen. Unlike animals, plants have cell walls. Their strong components are cellulose and lignan, neither of which can be digested by humans.
My grandmother told me, 50 years ago, to eat gelatin (collagen) every day in order to have strong fingernails and unwrinkled skin. I eat 2 tablespoons of hydrolyzed collagen every day. My hair became thicker and no longer splits. My nails stopped breaking. The tendon pain in my knee went away. My skin is so smooth that the women at the YMCA pool compliment me. (They can see the smooth skin of my inner upper arms which is a “tell” of old age in many women.) I am happy to share my secret – every human needs to eat collagen when aging because we all shed our entire skin once a month.
My vegetarian friends refuse to eat collagen because it’s animal based. I tell them that they are animals, not plants. It’s chemistry.
They refuse.
Collagen, which is the resilient material in the bones, surely goes away gradually similar to the collagen in the skin.
It’s no surprise at all that vegetarian women have more hip fractures. They are losing both components of bone structure – rigid calcium phosphate and resilient collagen.
Our body is permeated with collagen, which is about 25% of the dry weight of the human body. Here is an image of a pig heart with the cells removed, leaving only the collagen behind.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/01/health/ghost-heart-life-itsel…
When I see a person with very wrinkled skin I think of their heart. The skin is visible, but the heart is also permeated with collagen. Ditto the aorta and all the arteries. How many 68 year old women can do an hour of Zumba dancing, starting with this warm-up? I do Zumba (or a high-intensity weight workout 6 days a week).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGXoFBknmtk
Bottom line: A Mediterranean-style diet has been shown to be best for longevity. That is not necessarily optimal for the health of tissues that depend on collagen for integrity. It’s easy to buy hydrolyzed collagen. I use so much that I buy in bulk – 5 pounds of organic, grass-fed beef collagen hydrolyzate. Two tablespoons a day. In addition to my homemade bone broth which I eat every day.
Wendy