08 May Osteoporosis: What’s the Big Deal?
If you are one of the 40 million people suffering from osteoporosis, you know the painful effects it can have on the body. Osteoporosis is a disease that debilitates the bones and attacks their strength, making fractures and bone loss a common occurrence in it’s sufferers. Osteoporosis generally occurs in the hip, wrist, and spinal areas and will change your healthy bone over time so that it is brittle, porous and weaker than it should be. Besides the pain and ease of fracturing bones, patients will also experience back pain, posture changes and a curvature of the spine. Although there is no cure for osteoporosis, you can be proactive in preventing the disease and stopping its progression. With our help, you can learn more about your osteoporosis, how to keep a proper diet and what medications can help you rebuild your bones and delay bone loss. At Mile High Spine & Pain Center, let us help you with your symptoms of osteoporosis with therapeutic treatments to sooth your pain and help you feel better.
How Prevalent Is Osteoporosis?
40 million people suffer from osteoporosis or are at risk to develop the disease. It is a disease that mainly affects women and the elderly, but over 2 million men suffer from osteoporosis as well. You may have heard of osteoporosis and may even know that it deals with the bones. The name itself will tell you a lot, as “osteoporosis” literally means “porous bone”. Osteoporosis is a disease that attacks the strength of the bones. In a healthy bone, the inside will have a dense, honeycomb-like structure. A bone with osteoporosis will have much larger spaces in the bone structure than they should and those holes grow over time. Many people may not be aware that they have osteoporosis without the diagnosis from a medical professional. Some patients may begin to experience back pain, posture and height changes, a curved spine and especially compression fractures and broken bones from minor injuries. Those symptoms can indicate that there is something amiss and that osteoporosis may be present.
How Do You Know If You’re At Risk?
Osteoporosis affects more women than it does men, so if you are a woman, you automatically have a higher risk for osteoporosis. This is due to changes in hormone levels—such as estrogen—that lessens after menopause and depletes bone density. Osteoporosis is something that can run in families, so if you have a family history of it, take extra measures to prevent the disease and get your bone density checked by a medical professional throughout your life. You may also be at risk if you take no steps to keep your bones strong and provide them enough calcium and vital nutrients throughout your life.
What’s the Big Deal?
Osteoporosis is a very big deal, as it attacks the bones in the body. A human body has 270 bones at birth, which turns into 206 by adulthood as some bones in the body fuse together. Your bones reach their maximum density around age 30, and then bone mass ceases to accumulate. Osteoporosis can attack any of those 206 bones in your body. That means you must do all you can before that time to make sure you keep as much bone as possible for as long as possible. A nutrient-dense diet with exercise helps immensely with this, so being healthy is also a big deal when it comes to preventing osteoporosis and other chronic diseases. The National Institute of Aging tells us that the bones constantly regenerate themselves by breaking down old bone and replacing it with new bone. Over time and with age, there is more breakdown than regeneration that occurs, so you literally lose bone over time. That loss is even greater if you’re in poor health. Osteoporosis can lead to compression fractures and breaks with small falls or very minor injuries that shouldn’t produce a break at all. That is perhaps the biggest deal when it comes to osteoporosis. You could break a bone and struggle to heal properly or break bones often, which greatly impedes normal life.
How We Can Help You
For those who are at risk or those who already have osteoporosis, we provide bone density tests at our office to see how your bones are doing. We will assess your health report and then discuss vitamins, activities and rehabilitative treatments you can incorporate into your lifestyle to help stop the progression of osteoporosis or to help prevent it. We always stress a healthy diet no matter the patient or the reason they come into our office. A healthy and balanced diet with plenty of nutrients will always give you a leg up on preventing not only osteoporosis, but also a myriad of other conditions and diseases.
Osteoporosis is not a curable disease, but the progression of the disease can be stopped and prevention of the disease is also possible. We suggest you get proper amounts of vitamin D and calcium to feed your bones the nutrients they need to stay strong. Keep a balanced and healthy diet and couple it with weight-bearing exercises. We have many tips when it comes to diet and exercise for osteoporosis prevention. We also have many rehabilitative therapies to help your pain and symptoms and to get you healthier and stronger.
For your own customized treatment plan to protect your bones, come visit our Mile High Spine & Pain Center office today or call (720) 507-0080 for your free consultation. Osteoporosis is a big deal, but it doesn’t have to rule your life. Come work with us today and let us combat osteoporosis together!