Osteoporosis: Knowing The Risk Factors

Under Family Category: Family Health

Picture of Bone ImageOsteoporosis is a bone-weakening disease that develops slowly-often without any symptoms-and makes bones so brittle that they break or fracture under normal use. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 10 million Americans already have osteoporosis, and 18 million more have low bone mass, which places them at increased risk for this disease.

Many people don’t even realize they have the disease until they are older. However osteoporosis can occur in younger people as well, as a result of a failure to maximize bone mass during childhood and adolescence. The risk factors for osteoporosis include:

1. Gender: Women are 4 times more likely than men to develop osteoporosis because they naturally have less bone mass, and they tend to lose bone tissue earlier than men.

2. Race: Caucasians and Asians are at higher risk than African-Americans and Hispanics.

3. Age: The older you are, the more likely you are to have lost bone mass, and after middle age, nearly everyone begins to lose bone mass.

4. Smoking.

5. Heavy alcohol use.

6. Hormone levels: Low estrogen or testosterone levels accelerate bone loss.

7. Low body weight: Underweight people tend to have lower bone mass.

8. Family history of osteoporosis.

9. Chronic low calcium and vitamin D intake.

10. Inactivity: Lack of regular exercise (especially weight-bearing exercise such as walking and lifting weights) increases the risk of bone loss.

3 people have left comments

[…] […]

Family, Children and Parenting » Blog Archive » Exercise For Strong Bones wrote on June 3, 2007 - 10:30 am | Visit Link

[…] […]

Questions You Should Ask Your Mother · Family, Children and Parenting wrote on June 9, 2007 - 4:32 am | Visit Link

[…] We need to develop a good “bone bank” so when we start to lose bone density in our 40s, and beyond, we’ve got less chance of developing osteoporosis, or weak bones. Calcium is crucial in developing and maintaining strong bones and the best source of calcium Is dairy foods. Eating two to three serves of milk, yoghurt or cheese each day is the simplest way to meet our daily requirements. But what do you do if you or your children don’t eat dairy, don’t like it, think it’s fattening, or have been told to cut it out of your diet? […]

Bony Matters · Family, Children and Parenting wrote on November 25, 2007 - 9:45 am | Visit Link

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