Bone remodelling — building vs preserving
One of 3 mechanistic pathways to 🦴 Joints & bone · 16 options
Bone is continuously demolished by osteoclasts and rebuilt by osteoblasts. Anabolic agents build new bone; anti-resorptive agents stop the demolition. They are not interchangeable and the sequence matters — using an anti-resorptive first blunts the response to an anabolic afterwards.
Normal blood calcium with a raised PTH means your skeleton is being dismantled to keep it normal — active bone loss that a standard panel reads as fine. Sex hormones matter as much as calcium here, in both sexes.
Vitamin D (25-Hydroxy)Parathyroid Hormone & CalciumOsteocalcinTotal TestosteroneEstradiol, Standard (ECLIA)TSH (Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone)🦴 Bone Density & Fracture Risk covers these in one panel →
What engages this pathway
Ordered by how directly each one acts on the mechanism above — never by how much trial evidence exists. Each links to its full breakdown with dosing, half-life and vendor.
💉 Teriparatide
Intermittent PTH is anabolic — the pulsatility is the mechanism, and continuous PTH does the exact opposite. The strongest bone-building agent available, approved for severe osteoporosis and used off-label for non-union fractures.
💉 Abaloparatide
PTHrP analog with faster density gains and less hypercalcaemia than teriparatide.
💉 Raloxifene
A SERM that is estrogenic at bone and anti-estrogenic at breast — anti-resorptive with a reduced breast-cancer signal. VTE risk is the trade.
🧬 Vitamin D
Required for calcium absorption. Without adequate D, calcium supplementation is close to pointless.
🧬 Vitamin K2 Complex
Carboxylates osteocalcin so calcium is deposited in bone, and matrix Gla protein so it is kept out of arteries. MK-7 has the longer half-life; MK-4 the higher-dose Japanese fracture data.
🧬 Calcium & Magnesium
The mineral substrate. Magnesium is required for the enzyme that converts vitamin D to its active form, which is why calcium alone underperforms.
🧬 Bone Support
The full cofactor package — calcium, magnesium, D, K, boron, silica.
🧬 Strontium
Incorporates into hydroxyapatite and appears both anabolic and anti-resorptive. It is denser than calcium, so DEXA overstates the gain — a genuine measurement artifact people misread as success.
🧬 Boron
Reduces urinary calcium and magnesium loss and influences vitamin D metabolism.
🧬 Collagen
Bone is roughly a third collagen. Postmenopausal trials show improved bone mineral density with peptide supplementation.
🧬 Silica
Involved in early matrix mineralisation.
🧬 Vitamin C
Collagen scaffold cofactor — the organic matrix mineral is deposited onto.
💉 Cartalax
Cartilage and bone bioregulator peptide from the Khavinson series.
💉 Sigumir
Same series, same evidence caveat — mechanistically interesting, independently unreplicated.
🧬 Creatine
Resistance training plus creatine improved bone density in postmenopausal trials — mechanical loading is the strongest osteogenic stimulus there is, and this lets you load harder.
🧬 Whey Protein (RecoveryPro)
Bone matrix is protein before it is mineral. The old idea that high protein leaches calcium from bone has been reversed by better evidence — low protein intake is the actual fracture risk factor in older adults.
The other 2 routes to joints & bone
Pick the pathway that matches where you are actually stuck. An appetite drug does nothing for someone who already undereats.
Want the protocols behind these?
Dosing schedules, stacking, cycle timing and Coach Cam's notes live inside the Academy — plus the full interactive Vault.
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Frequently asked questions
Bone is continuously demolished by osteoclasts and rebuilt by osteoblasts. Anabolic agents build new bone; anti-resorptive agents stop the demolition. They are not interchangeable and the sequence matters — using an anti-resorptive first blunts the response to an anabolic afterwards.
16 options are mapped to this pathway in the Vault, including Teriparatide, Abaloparatide, Raloxifene, Vitamin D. They are grouped by the mechanism they act through rather than ranked by how much trial evidence exists — 13 carry clinical validation and 3 are mechanistic predictions.
Normal blood calcium with a raised PTH means your skeleton is being dismantled to keep it normal — active bone loss that a standard panel reads as fine. Sex hormones matter as much as calcium here, in both sexes. The markers worth checking are Vitamin D (25-Hydroxy), Parathyroid Hormone & Calcium, Osteocalcin, Total Testosterone.
Unproven is not the same as ineffective. Of the 16 options on this pathway, 13 have clinical validation and 3 are graded theoretical — meaning the mechanism is sound but the specific human trial has not been run, which is true of a great deal of what works in this space. Nothing on this page is ordered by evidence tier, because sorting by trial count would bury the compounds you came looking for.