What is Osteoporosis?

My Dear Sexy Readers,

Today we are addressing a request from a fellow blogger who posted about her newly diagnosed osteoporosis. Coincidentally, I have been working on this at work so I have all the scientific literature at hand AND on the 20th October is WORLD OSTEOPOROSIS DAY

Osteoporosis, the basics:
Osteoporosis is a common, skeletal disorder characterized by a lower bone mass and a deterioration of bone tissue. As a consequence, you are more susceptible to have an increase in bone fragility and are more prone to fracture.
The diagnosis of the disease relies on assessing the bone density which is considered as a marker for bone strength and can be predictive of risk fracture.*

Fracture sites

Common sites for osteoporotic fracture are the spine, hip, distal forearm (wrist) and proximal humerus (shoulder). The likelihood of a fracture at any of these sites is 40% or more in Western Europe, which is close to the probability of coronary heart disease.
Fractures can also happen at many other sites of course such a the pelvis, ribs and distal femur and tibia.

Common fractures sites

Approximately 50% of fracture-related deaths in women were due to hip fractures, 28% to clinical vertebral and 22% to other fractures.

Who's at risk?

Apart from medical conditions, there are some risk factors we cannot do anything about such as getting old (!). Other factors include gender (after menopause, female hormone deficiency leads to a rapid reduction in bone density), family history, a previous fracture, ethnicity (European or Asian ancestry has strong predisposition).
However, there are things that we do to ourselves that can influence our risk of fracture. These include smoking, heavy drinking, Vitamin D deficiency, low calcium intake, poor nutrition and eating disorders, imbalance between Omega-3 and -6.

What to do to avoid a fracture?

Essentially, some risk factors are unchangeable but a healthy lifestyle could potentially help you reduce your risk of fracture, such as eating well, not drinking too much, keeping a healthy weight and BMI, doing some daily exercise, bending smart (bending at the knee and not the waist), taking supplements.

Interventions

The most commonly used agents in Europe are raloxifene; the bisphosphonates (alendronate, ibandronate, risedronate and zoledronic acid); agents derived from parathyroid hormone; denosumab; and strontium ranelate. They have all been shown to reduce the risk of vertebral fractures and in some cases, some of these agents have been shown to specifically decrease the risk of fracture at the hip.

Do you know someone who suffers from osteoporosis? What do you think of the fact that the healthy lifestyle is again given as advice to reduce risks?

Let me know, my Sexy Readers, in the comment box below. Soon, we'll have Seran's second post up, it will focus on baby's immunisation programme! A contentious topic, so don't forget to come back soon to check it out ;)

See you soon for more Sexy Science,

* It's very important not to fall for "low bone density=fracture".
To use an analogy we might be more familiar with:
Blood pressure - Hypertension - Stroke:
Although we cannot directly link high blood pressure to the inevitability of a stroke, we measure our blood pressure to diagnose a hypertension which put us at a higher risk of a stroke.
The same way here:
Bone density - bone strength - fracture
We measure the bone density to diagnose bone fragility which puts us at a higher risk of a fracture.

Further reading
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Osteoporosis/Pages/Prevention.aspx
http://www.iofbonehealth.org/world-osteoporosis-day