Woman Cancels Prolia Prescription After Her Endocrinologist Sees What Happened to Her Bone Density in Six Months

By Dr. Chloe Jenkins, MD Leading Orthopedic Doctor✔ Medically reviewed  ·  Updated July 2026

She spent almost four thousand dollars on calcium over thirty years and her bones were worse than ever. Then a retired research nurse from Johns Hopkins asked her one question that changed everything. Here is her story, in her own words.

The moment my endocrinologist saw my six-month follow-up DEXA scan, she canceled my Prolia prescription and asked what I had been taking.

I just stared at her, confused. Taking? I had been taking everything.

Calcium citrate, because I had read carbonate does not absorb well. Vitamin D3, not D2. K2 as MK-7 because that is the form that stays in your system longer. Magnesium glycinate at night. I was not guessing. I had spent months reading studies and comparing labels.

"Something changed. Your lumbar spine improved in six months. Your hip improved. That does not happen at 61."

The Diagnosis That Changed Everything

Eight months earlier, my doctor had called with my DEXA results. "T-score negative 2.3 in your lumbar spine. That is osteoporosis."

I had been taking calcium since my thirties. A big chalky pill every morning for almost thirty years. "You need to increase your calcium to 1200 milligrams daily," she said. "And we should discuss hormone replacement therapy."

That night I researched HRT. The increased risks after age 60. Blood clots. Stroke. I was ten years past menopause, and the risks scared me more than the diagnosis. But the diagnosis terrified me enough.

My mother had her first fracture at 67. Broke her wrist reaching for a coffee cup. Then she broke her hip at 71.

She went into the hospital on a Tuesday and she never came home. Six days on the ward, then rehab because she was not walking, then the nursing home when she still was not. Half a room, a curtain down the middle, and a window that looked at the parking lot. She apologised to me every single visit. For being in the bed.

She died there fourteen months later. Her certificate says pneumonia. It was the hip. It is always the hip.

I did not have much time left to fix this.

When Doing Everything Right Makes Things Worse

I spent that night googling alternatives to bone loss medications until my eyes burned. Strontium banned in some countries. Vitamin K that might help or might not. Forums full of women as scared as I was, all of us trading suggestions that did not work.

So I dug into the research. Not just what to take, but how it actually works in the body. Calcium citrate absorbs better than carbonate. D3 is the active form. K2 helps direct calcium to bones. MK-7 stays active longer.

I even tried AlgaeCal. The whole-food kind that is supposed to be better. Eighty dollars a month for four months. That is $320 gone. Between the calcium, the D3, the K2, the magnesium and the AlgaeCal, I was spending over $140 a month on supplements alone.

My next DEXA scan three months later? Worse.

The Question That Changed Everything

That is when I called my old friend Janet, a research nurse who had worked at Johns Hopkins for 22 years before she retired.

"Still taking all that calcium?" she asked after I explained. "Of course. The right form. Citrate. 1200 milligrams daily. Plus D3, K2, magnesium."

She was quiet for so long I thought we had been disconnected.

"Who do you think is picking all that calcium up?"

I did not have an answer. I had spent twenty years researching forms and dosages and timing and I had never once asked who was doing the work.

The Mechanism Nobody Explained to Me

She explained it very simply.

Your bones are a building site and they never close. One crew tears the old bone out. Another crew lays the new bone in. That has been going on inside you every day since you were born.

Calcium is the brick. Every morning I had been having a pallet of brick delivered to the job site. But brick does not lay itself. Somebody has to pick it up and set it in the wall.

That is the building crew. And that crew runs on a cellular fuel called NAD+.

Estrogen is what kept that fuel topped up. When I went through menopause at fifty, my estrogen dropped to almost nothing, and the fuel in those cells dropped with it. By sixty I was running on about a quarter of what I had at thirty.

The brick kept arriving every single morning. The crew had gone home.

And the brick did not sit in a tidy pile waiting for me. It went wherever it could. My arteries. My kidneys. My soft tissues. Everywhere except my bones.

"You are not building stronger bones. You are calcifying everything else while your bones starve."

The D3 I was taking helps me absorb more calcium, which just meant I was absorbing more material nobody was there to lay. The K2 was supposed to direct calcium to bones, but direction is not labor. I had optimized every variable except the one that actually mattered.

And here is the part that made me put my hand over my mouth. The tear-down crew barely needs any fuel at all. So while the building quietly stopped at fifty, the demolition kept running exactly on schedule. Every single day. For eleven years.

And before you ask, because I asked: this is not a hormone. It does not add estrogen and it does not touch estrogen. Nothing is going into you that was not in there to begin with.

The Research That Has Been Published For Years

"I did not say nothing works," Janet said. "I said the crew that builds your bone has no fuel. Have you ever heard of NMN?"

I had. That was the embarrassing part.

Two years earlier I had bought it off Amazon because it kept coming up. Four and a half stars, thousands of reviews. I took it every single morning for four months, felt nothing at all, and decided NMN was one more thing that does not work.

"Go and get the bottle," she said.

I still had it. I keep everything that failed me.

"Read me the number."

250 milligrams. NMN and nothing else on the back of it.

"That is the sleep and energy dose. That is what people take for jet lag. The bone research uses double that, and it uses it with cofactors, because making NAD+ burns through methyl groups and without TMG most of what you swallow is wasted."

"You did not take the wrong thing. You took a quarter of the right thing."

Then she sent me two papers.

The first was a randomized, placebo-controlled trial in postmenopausal women on trans-resveratrol, one of the three cofactors. Regular supplementation improved bone mineral density. Not held steady. Improved.

The second was the NAD+ work. When you restore NAD+ in bone-building cells, they stop aging out and start laying bone again.

Improved. In three years of appointments nobody had ever used that word about my bones.

What Actually Happens Inside Your Bones

Your bones are constantly being torn down and rebuilt, every single day. Cells called osteoclasts break down old bone. Cells called osteoblasts build new bone behind them. When you are young the two stay in balance and your skeleton replaces itself every ten years.

The osteoblasts are the ones doing the building, and building is expensive. They have to lay down a collagen frame and then harden it with the minerals you eat. That work runs on NAD+.

Estrogen is what kept that supply up. After menopause it goes, and the osteoblasts are left trying to do the most demanding job in your skeleton on a quarter tank.

The osteoclasts have no such problem. Tearing down is cheap. So they keep going at full speed while the building slows to nothing, and the calcium you swallow every morning shows up to a site with nobody on the payroll.

That is not a calcium deficiency. That is a fuel deficiency wearing a calcium mask.

What Happened When I Found the Right Brand

Janet told me only three things matter.

Five hundred milligrams of NMN, because that is the dose the research uses and most bottles are 250.

All three cofactors at clinical dose, in the same capsule. TMG so the conversion does not stall. Quercetin to clear the worn-out cells crowding the bone surface. Trans-resveratrol to slow the tear-down crew, which is the job estrogen used to do before menopause.

And third-party testing for actual potency, published. Not label accuracy. Potency. NMN degrades sitting in a warehouse, and most companies will only ever tell you what they put in, never what is left.

I looked on Amazon first, like everyone does. 250 milligrams. No cofactors. No potency testing. Brand names I had never heard of, including the one I had already wasted four months on. Most of it failed all three of Janet's criteria.

Then I found Nuvwell. Five hundred milligrams. TMG, quercetin and trans-resveratrol, all three, printed on the label. Third-party tested with the certificate posted where you can read it. Two capsules with breakfast. It arrived in four days.

I kept taking everything else. The calcium, the D3, the K2. Because now I understood what they are. Building materials. They were never the problem. I just finally had somebody on site to lay them.

Week one, nothing. I almost sent it back. Week two, I realized I had slept through the night without joint pain. Week four, I went up my stairs normally, not one step at a time like a toddler. Week six, my daughter asked if I wanted to go for a walk and I said yes without thinking.

Month three, my grandson asked me to get down on the floor and build blocks with him, and I did it without even thinking about it. When we were done I stood right back up on my own, no hand on the coffee table, no counting to three first. Two years ago I would have made an excuse and hated myself for it.

Month five, I planted my entire vegetable garden. Four hours kneeling, standing, kneeling again. My husband watched from the kitchen window, shaking his head. The joint stiffness that had been creeping in was gone.

The Scan That Proved Everything

When I showed up for my six-month DEXA scan, my endocrinologist pulled up my original images, then the new ones, then the originals again. "This is remarkable," she said. "Your bone density increased. What changed?"

I told her everything. The late-night research. Janet's explanation. The 250 milligram bottle I had thrown away two years too early. She took notes.

"Why did nobody tell me about this before?" I asked. "Calcium and vitamin D are the standard protocol. HRT for those who can tolerate the risks."

Standard protocol nearly cost me my independence. My future with my grandson. The fifteen good years I thought I had left.

Why This Works When Everything Else Failed

Here is the honest comparison, the way Janet laid it out. Your bones do not need more calcium. They need the crew that lays the calcium you are already taking.

Calcium, D and AlgaeCal are building materials, but with nobody to lay them they end up everywhere except your bones. Prolia and Fosamax slow bone loss by shutting down the cells that break bone down, but they do not build new bone, and if you stop, the loss can rebound worse than before. HRT brings estrogen back and it does work for bone, but most doctors will not prescribe it ten years past menopause because of the risks. NMN puts back the fuel the building crew lost, so your body does what it is supposed to do, and all that calcium finally has somewhere to go.

What They Are Not Telling You About "Normal Aging"

Bone loss after menopause is not inevitable. It feels inevitable because for thirty years the only advice anyone gave us was take more calcium. But calcium was never the problem. The crew was.

When you put the fuel back, all the calcium you have faithfully taken for decades finally has somewhere to go. Your bones can rebuild. Not just slow their decline. Actually rebuild.

The Moment Everything Changed

Last week my daughter asked if I wanted to go hiking at the state park. The trail with the lookout we used to do before Mom got sick. Two years ago I would have said no and felt my heart break a little. Last week, I said yes. We hiked three miles and I did not need to stop once.

On the drive home she said something that broke me. "I was so scared you were going to end up like Grandma." "Me too," I said. But I am not.

Real Women, Real Results

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Where Can I Get Nuvwell?

Nuvwell is only available on the official website. Every batch is 500mg of NMN with all three cofactors, third-party tested for potency. It is not on Amazon and not at GNC, because they cannot control what sits on those shelves or for how long.

Questions Women Ask Before They Start

• Puts back the fuel your bone-building cells lost
• Rebuilds bone, not just slows the loss
• 500mg NMN with TMG, quercetin and trans-resveratrol
• Third-party tested for potency, certificate published
• 180-day money-back guarantee

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Dr. Chloe Jenkins, MD Leading Orthopedic Doctor

Dr. Jenkins has spent over two decades treating postmenopausal women with bone loss. She shares patient stories like this one to help women understand what is actually happening inside their bones, and what can be done about it.

★★★★★  4.9  ·  #1 Doctor Recommended