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 need ‘exercise’. They need the stress of exercise, lifting weights and workouts. Bones respond to that stress, they get stronger, denser and put on ‘mass’.
Get started now – lift some weights, do some energetic walking or running. Join a gym and use the specialized equipment and trainers who can help you live longer and stronger. Try treadmills, exercise machines, functional training, yoga, even aquatic classes — place stress on your muscles and your body will increase bone density.
A Rockefeller University study has shown that for older people, who exercise three times a week, reduced the rate of bone loss or improved bone density. Researchers measured bone density, blood and urine chemistry and X-rayed both spines and hips. Second the Pharmaceutical: There are now some drugs that can help reduce bone loss, but you need to consult your doctor for appropriate recommendations.
There are bisphosphonates, such as Alendronate, Risedronate, Ibandronate, and Zoledronic acid. There are also selective estrogen receptor modulators, Calcitonin and others. Again, talk to your doctor.
Personal Recommendation Pharmaceuticals are fine, but my recommendation is to follow ‘old Mother Nature’. In our overly automated society with its overly processed foods, we are preconditioned toward illness and apathy. We need to take control of our bodies and live a cleaner and more active lifestyle.
If you are serious about protecting yourself from hip and spine fractures, and the personal and financial risks associated with bone loss, you need to develop a simple plan. First, evaluate your diet – have you gained weight? Are you feeling fragile or tentative? Lay off processed foods and eat closer to nature. Secondly, just move! Walk, hike, join a gym, swim, life weights, take exercise classes such as aerobics, Qi Gong, Tai Chi or Yoga.
Record your progress as you increase the weights you can lift. Soon you will find ‘your groove’ and things will get easier as you get stronger. Since I mentioned yoga, let me paraphrase that famous yogi – Yogi Berra catcher for the NY Yankees – who said “Baseball (yoga) is 90% mental, and the other half is physical”.
Start on your 90% mental side and the 50% physical side will follow along happily. Yogi didn’t study arithmetic, but he was a great human being..
