Beginning around age fifty, most of us are at risk for bone loss and fractures. It is not something we ordinarily can feel or observe. Often our doctors don’t see the signs when they are treating us for other issues.
The consequences of advanced bone loss are severe, so we have to fight it. Hidden Enemy First, you must find out if you have lost bone mass. Most of us don’t know.
The New Mexico Clinical Research on Osteoporosis found that “80 percent of hip fracture patients didn’t know they had bone loss and were not diagnosed although almost all had osteoporosis and were at risk for another hip fracture”. Each year, there are over 300,000 hip fractures for persons over 65 and three quarters of those hospitalized were women. The medical costs can be outrageous, but the personal costs are even greater.
Sadly, 20% to 30% of patients die within a year following a hip fracture. And of those who survive, 50-percent will not regain pre-fracture level of function and 25-percent will require long-term care. So, let’s not have any hip fractures.
I did not even mention the 700,000 plus spinal fractures that occur each year due to bone loss. Fighting Back Yes, you can fight back. We need to fight back.
Luckily, there are two basic options: one is physical, and one is pharmaceutical. First the Physical: To stay strong your bones need two things — Proper Nutrition and Stress. The proper nutrition makes sense, but the ‘stress’ sounds weird.
By stress, I mean your bones nee.