| Newsletter Spring 2007
Spring 2007 Articles
Boning Up on Osteoporosis
Strong bones are an important part of overall health. Bones bear the weight of the body and work with muscles to hold it upright. Bones shield the delicate internal organs and the spinal cord. Not only would we be a messy puddle of skin without bones to support us, but bones store minerals for the entire body. Important bone-building occurs throughout childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. During this critical time our bodies are building strong and dense bones. This process peaks by age thirty when bones are at their strongest and most dense. After that, bones require constant maintenance. Although we often think of bones as inert or static, they are actually living tissue continually being broken down and reformed.
“If you look inside the bone, it looks like a honeycomb,” says Endocrinologist Lisa Stone, M.D. “Our bones are constantly getting remodeled. From the time we’re born to the time we die, there’s a race that’s going on inside the bones. We have cells that are chomping walls away, and cells that are patching.”
Up until about the age of 30 the patching cells dominate, and bones increase in density. But after age 30, the cells that break down the bone work at a higher rate than the patching cells, and bone density begins to deteriorate.
“There is a steady rate of bone loss that everyone experiences,” says Dr. Stone. “Even in women who are taking adequate amount of calcium and getting weight-bearing exercise, there is still going to be about a 1% bone density loss per year. If they have good bone density to start with, that may be enough to keep them in a healthy range until they’re elderly.”
 Bone loss is painless and silent. Often it’s not until a bone is fractured that you discover your bone density has deteriorated. “Osteoporosis is where you’ve lost enough bone that you’re at significantly increased risk of fracturing a bone,” says Dr. Stone. “The most common fractures are compression fractures in the spine. The spine is our main structural weight bearing column, and it is constantly getting bent and twisted. With mechanical forces on a weak bone, at some point it can push it to the point of breaking. Hips, wrists and even ribs are also common fracture sites as bone mass deteriorates. People can break a rib coughing.”
Osteoporosis leads to 1.5 million fractures per year according to the National Institutes of Health. It threatens 34 million Americans, mostly older women, but older men get it too. These numbers are predicted to rise as the population ages. “Women after menopause can lo
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