Derrick T

The Elements of Osteoporosis Prevention, Part 1

When I was in college, my grandmother broke her hip and fell (yes, broke her hip and THEN fell). She did it again, a few years later. By the time I was in medical school, she was in a nursing home, completely incapacitated by her osteoporosis.

I went to lectures and listened to the then state-of-the-art of osteoporosis: you have all the bone mass you are ever going to have in your twenties. After that, it’s a slow, steady decline to a nursing home.

Unfortunately, Grandma’s story is pretty typical. According to the Surgeon General’s 2004 report on bone health, 4 out of every 10 white women aged 50 or older will suffer a hip, spine, or wrist fracture (the risk is lower in blacks, due to genetic factors). Up to 95% of these fractures are caused by osteopenia/osteoporosis.

There are over 1.5 million osteopenic fractures per year in the US. These often lead to a downward spiral in physical and mental health. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather stand in front of a bus.

Luckily, the state of the art has changed a bit in the last few (twenty-five!) years since those med school lectures.

Sanberdoo

In this series of articles, I will expound on the “elements” of osteoporosis prevention.

The first element is CALCIUM. The challenge is to keep it IN your bones. The solution:

• Take in enough! 1200 mg/day. You can get that in 3-8 oz glasses of skim milk, if you also eat a balanced diet. I get that much drinking lattes (BTW, new research is questioning that old adage that caffeine inhibits calcium absorption—WHOO-HOO!)
  

  LFL16

• Sunshine! Vitamin D regulates Calcium absorption. You need it. But we slather ourselves with sunscreen to prevent wrinkles and skin cancer. So, feel free to take supplements—600 IU/day.
• Eat right! Calcium balance, absorption and use is a complicated mishmash of competing hormones and receptors and co-factors. To make it all work right, you need to eat right. Yo-yo dieters take notice: you may be harming your bones. You also need 700 mg/day of Phosphorus, and 320 mg/day of Magnesium. If you can’t eat right, for whatever reason, take a good multivitamin every day.
• Kick the habit! Smoking is bad. It’s bad for SO many reasons—one of which is that it leeches calcium from your bones.
• Stop drinking diet sodas! Or any sodas, for that matter. They almost all contain phosphoric acid, which may inhibit the absorption of calcium. The jury’s still out on this one, but feel free to stay on the safe side.

In my next post, we’ll look at the second element. And it’s not one you swallow.