Get the Background Information on Osteopenia and Osteoporosis

Osteopenia means that your bones are getting thinner, weaker, and less dense. It's time to take some action or your next stop will be osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis means that your bones are dangerously weak and there is an increasing possibility of fracture. 

It's the fractures that are dangerous. A fall that would not hurt a young person will actually fracture or break your bones. In the pictures you can see the difference between healthy bone and osteoporitic bone.

Hip fractures are the ones that often lead to death because you need to lie down to recover. Lying down for long stretches of time will encourage more weakness, strokes and pneumonia. So it's not actually the fracture that kills you - it's not like a stroke or heart attack. But it will immobilize you and, even if you do survive, you have a much greater chance of having another fracture within a year.

Osteoporosis is called the Silent Killer because it usually doesn't hurt to have weaker bones. You don't even notice it. It's not until the doctor orders a bone density test of some kind that you find out you are losing bone. The other way to find out is to measure your height. As your spine loses substance you will get shorter.

  Bone Density Tests and What They Reveal

Bone Mineral Density (BMD) tests are used to assess bone density. Results are defined as a T-score, with normal being between 2.5 and minus 1.0, osteopenia between minus 1.0 and minus 2.5, and osteoporosis lower than minus 2.5.

The two most common tests of bone density are DXA at your hip or spine and QUS at your ankle.

Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). This is the most accurate test available - it can detect even a 1 percent change in bone density. It's most often used to measure your bone density at your hip or spine. This test involves a small amount of radiation.

QUS test - instead of radiation, this test estimates bone density using ultrasound measurements. After placing your bare foot on the machine, high-frequency sound waves are transmitted through your heel. The test takes less than a minute. It is an inexpensive test, often found in drug stores, and will give you a beginning score to know if you have a problem or not.

Bone density testing is recommended if:

Unfortunately more and more younger women are being tested all the time so that more drugs can be prescribed. This is actually not a good thing. Although the claims are that 50% of women will have a bone fracture, in truth most fractures occur after the age of 82, and most women die before 80. See my blog post for January 2010.

The negative thing about the bone density tests is that they test density and not flexibility. When we have too much calcium in our bones they are dense but brittle and we have more fractures. No-one has yet figured out a way to test the flexibility of bone, so the experts don't say much about it. But that is why the studies can't prove that more calcium actually lowers fracture rate. Read the calcium/magnesium article for more on this topic.

  Risk Factors

Your risk of osteoporosis increases if you're a woman and you're white or Asian.
Other factors also increase your risk, including:

That pretty much covers everyone over 55, doesn't it?

  How Living Bone Is Created

The way bone-building works is that our bones are living structures with osteoblasts busy building bone, and osteoclasts just as busy tearing down the old so there is room for the new. Osteoporosis occurs when bone is broken down faster than it is rebuilt. The reason why greater loss occurs after menopause is that our hormones somehow block the breakdown. That is why hormone therapy used to be recommended to help protect against osteoporosis.

Bisphosphonate drugs, like Fosamax, are poisons that selectively kill off osteoclasts. So they stop the bones from tearing down the old but they don't do anything to help build new bone. Your bones may look denser to the testing machines but they are dense with old bone that should have been cleared away. They are brittle, not flexible.

An oral surgeon called a customer of mine recently to warn her off the bisphosphonate drugs. He had been working on someone's jaw and it just crumbled. She had been on the drugs for four years. We may be hearing more stories like this soon. Check the blog, there are lots of horror stories in there.

  Natural Solutions

Bone changes don't happen really fast. If you get onto a program of solutions you can wait for one year and then get tested again. If there is no actual change in the numbers, this is still an improvement. If left untended your bones would naturally get thinner every year so no change at all is better than that. However most of the solutions in the following articles will produce significant improvement in bone over a five year period, or even more if you incorporate them all gradually into your life.

Since they are natural solutions, co-operating with your internal health mechanisms, they will also bring unexpected improvements in other areas, like balance and muscle strength and enjoyment of life.

So, enough with the gloomy stats. Let's take the positive path and  move on to the articles with solutions. We can prevail over this and become better than ever!

Disclaimer: Nothing on this site is to be construed as medical advice. I am not a medical practitioner and have no ability to diagnose or treat disease. This site is intended for informational purposes only. Everyone should make their own health decisions after getting all the information they need.

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 Information for Alternative Osteopenia and Osteoporosis Solutions