Osteoporosis Awareness: Time For Some Shock Treatment?

•About 1 in 2 women age 50 or older will have an osteoporosis-related fracture in their remaining lifetime. Hmmm, which side of that fence will YOU fall on (fall being the operative word)?

•A vertebral (spinal) fracture can be painful, or can occur with no pain at all. It can cause loss of height; deformities (the widow’s hump); and stooped posture. Not a pretty picture.

• It’s predicted 33% of Boomer women will break a hip. Yeah, so? This is right from the NOF Web site: “A woman's risk of hip fracture is equal to her combined risk of breast, uterine and ovarian cancer. At six months after a hip fracture, only 15 percent of hip fracture patients can walk across a room unaided. An average of 24 percent of hip fracture patients aged 50 and over die in the year following their fracture.” You don’t have to do the math to get the picture: you DO NOT want to break your hip.

•Did you think menopause was all about hot flashes and mood swings? Think again. The typical woman will lose 20% of her bone mass in the 5 to 7 years following menopause. Now THAT’S significant.

•So, you think you don’t have any risk factors for osteoporosis? Wrong. The top risk factor is being female. Check. Number-two is getting older. Check again. Others include a family history (mother or grandmother with a broken hip); being small or thin; not exercising enough; smoking; and excessive drinking. Now that you know what they are, count up your risk factors. Surprising, huh?

Finally, here are a couple to use on your friends’ high-school daughters; it’s estimated 90% of teenage girls don’t get enough calcium in their diets.

•A woman acquires about 90% of her bone mass by the time she’s 18. After the age of 35, she starts losing bone mass. The better bones you have at age 18, the better they’ll be at age 58. Here’s your choice: Get your calcium now, or break your back later.

•Teenagers can get full-blown osteoporosis. In fact, some of the seemingly fittest teenage girls are at highest risk, due to excessive dieting and prolonged hard exercise. Give yourself a break, girl. If you’re going to work out hard, you HAVE to get enough calcium and vitamin D. If you can’t or won’t eat dairy, take supplements—please!

That’s all for now. I think I’ll go practice up—on my husband. Bet he doesn’t know the 1-year mortality rate for a hip fracture is nearly twice as high for men as for women…