Doctors order bone scans to rule out bone health problems. Some bone disorders can be quite serious, and some of the chemical therapies for bone disease can have a negative impact on your body's ability to maintain a strong immune system. Vitamin C and zinc can be helpful as a supportive treatment in maintaining and restoring an adequate supply of bone-building nutrients.
Scanning Technology
The Medline Plus website describes a bone scan as "an imaging test that shows areas of increased or decreased bone turnover, or metabolism." During the test, Technetium-99--a radioactive material that is injected intravenously--travels through your body via the bloodstream. This radio tracer accumulates in your bones and gives off radiation that is captured as an image by a specialized camera.
Bone Scans
Bone scans detect and track bone loss, injury and infections that are not visible using traditional X-ray technology. Bone scans are critical in assessing bone damage from primary bone cancers such as osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma and in diagnosing cancers that have metastasized to the bone from other areas. Your doctor may also order a bone scan to see if you have a fracture or arthritis.
Bone Function and Disorders
Your skeleton is made of bone--living tissue that shapes, supports and protects your body and vital organs. Additionally, your body stores minerals in your bones, while your bone marrow--the soft material filling the central hollows of your bones--produces and stores red and white blood cells and platelets.
Bone disorders occur for a variety of reasons. Osteoporosis is a condition in which calcium and other mineral deficiencies cause your bones to become brittle and susceptible to fracturing and breakage. Osteomyelitis is a serious bone infection caused from bacteria such as Staphylococcus or from a fungus. Bone tumors can be caused by a number of cancers originating in the bone tissue itself--primarily bone cancer--or in other areas of the body--metastatic bone cancer.
Nutrition and Bone Health
Growing evidence suggests that Vitamin C and minerals such as zinc are critical to bone health. Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, is essential to the growth, maintenance and repair of healthy body tissue, including bone tissue. The National Institutes of Health's Medline Plus website notes that your body also needs a small amount of the trace mineral zinc for bone building. A 1997 study of nutritional influences on bone density by Susan New and associates, published in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition," concluded that high, long-term intake of Vitamin C, zinc, magnesium, potassium and fiber, "...may be important to bone health, possibly because of their beneficial effect on acid-base balance." New and others published additional research in the Journal's January 2000 issue that reinforced their original findings to conclude that "bone resorption with dietary factors provides further evidence of a positive link between fruit and vegetable consumption and bone health."
Potential
Scientists and researchers are recognizing the impact of nutrition on bone health as evidenced by an article posted on the University of Kansas Medical Center's Program in Integrative Medicine website. This case study of the application of high dosage, intravenous Vitamin C as treatment for debilitating pain in a woman with terminal breast cancer with extensive metastasis to her bones reported remarkable improvement in the patient's quality of life.
Other institutions such as the University of Maryland Medical Center, or UMMC, are promoting nutritional supplements as supportive treatment for bone disorders. UMMC recommends Vitamin C, zinc and other minerals to help in building the immune system for individuals with osteomyelitis.
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