“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” ~ anon
A Reminder on Maintaining Bone Health:
Osteoporosis Prevention, Treatment
Is fear, ignorance or procrastination putting you at risk of a devastating bone fracture?
Most of the news about osteoporosis concerns the side effects of current therapies and preventives. But it is important to put these effects in perspective — and to focus on treatment benefits and practical measures that can help to prevent costly and debilitating fractures in fragile bones.
Osteoporosis is both underdiagnosed and undertreated. Doctors say it is underdiagnosed because many who have it fail to get a bone density test, sometimes even after they suffer a fracture. The condition is undertreated because some people avoid drug therapy for fear of side effects, while others take their medications erratically or stop taking them altogether without consulting their doctors.
It is easy to understand the prevailing concern. People hear about drug side effects like osteonecrosis, or bone death, of the jaw (extremely rare and mostly in cancer patients) and unusual fractures of the thigh bone. They hear that supplements of bone-building calcium can increase the risk of heart attack or stroke.
Some 10 million Americans have osteoporosis, and 34 million more with low bone mass are at risk of developing it. It is a silent disease that typically first shows up as a low-trauma fracture of the hip, spine or wrist. Low-trauma does not mean no trauma; someone with healthy bones who falls from a standing height or less is unlikely to break a bone, according to Dr. Sundeep Khosla, president of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
While women are the far more frequent victims of osteoporosis and develop it at a younger age, men — especially those over 70 — are also at risk and even less likely than women to have the disease diagnosed and treated.
Good News: It develops slowly.
The study is part of a broad rethinking of how to diagnose and treat the potentially debilitating bone disease that can lead to broken hips and collapsing spines. A class of medications, bisphosphonates, (Fosamax…), has been found to prevent fractures in people with osteoporosis. But medical experts no longer recommend the medicines taken to prevent osteoporosis itself. Nor do we want women to take them indefinitely. In addition, the bone density measurements are no longer the sole defining factor in deciding if a woman needs to be treated.
Based on this study, researchers are asking whether frequent bone density measurements even make sense for the majority of older women whose bone density is not near a danger zone on initial tests, recommended to start at age 65, unless patient has risk factors for osteoporosis. The researchers report that fewer than 1% of women with normal bone density when they entered the study, and fewer than 5% with mildly low bone density, developed osteoporosis in the ensuing 15 years. But of those with substantially low bone density at the study’s start, 10% progressed to osteoporosis in about a year.
New Perspective on Treatment
The World Health Organization has labeled osteopenia is as a bone density “T-score” between minus 0.1 and minus 2.5, the lower number being the cutoff for osteoporosis.
Osteopenia is analogous to prediabetes or prehypertension, and as with these conditions, Dr. Khosla recommends that most cases of osteopenia are best treated with protective lifestyle measures, not drugs.
To prevent further bone loss:
- regular weight-bearing and strength-training exercise
- adequate calcium (1200 mg) & vitamin D (1,000 IU)/day
- no smoking
- limit alcohol consumption to one drink a day
The exceptions — those most likely to benefit from drug treatment even if they do not yet have osteoporosis — include people who already have had a low-trauma fracture and those with a bone density level approaching osteoporosis who also have other risk factors, like early menopause, a family history of osteoporosis, the use of steroid drugs (prednisone and others that increase bone loss), extreme thinness, a digestive problem that limits calcium absorption or advanced age.
“Age is itself a major risk factor for fracture,” Dr. Ethel Siris, director of the osteoporosis clinic at Columbia University Medical Center, New York. Even at the same bone density, a woman of 75 or older is more likely to experience a fall and fracture than a woman of 55.
Dr. Siris explained that with age, changes in the architecture of bones diminish their strength, which can be countered by bisphosphonates. Current thinking in the field, she said, is to place women at risk of fracture on a drug like Fosamax for five years and then perhaps take a one-year drug holiday. For two other bisphosphonates, Actonel and Boniva, she suggests a drug holiday of 6 to 12 months after seven years of treatment.
Benefit Versus Risk: Atypical Femur Fracture?
A recently published study examined the use of bisphosphonates among 12,777 Swedish women age 55 or older who suffered a fracture of the femur in 2008. Although those who had taken the drugs were 47 times as likely as those who had not to have experienced an atypical femur fracture, the actual number of these fractures was only 5 in 2,000 women who had used the drugs for five years.
The benefit to bisphosphonates still outweighs this risk: The drugs would have prevented more than 100 osteoporotic fractures in these women, a benefit at least 20 X greater than the risk.
Furthermore, this unusual fracture can be prevented because it is preceded by a warning sign — bone changes that cause pain or discomfort in the thigh or groin that persists for weeks or months. If this occurs, Dr. Siris said, you should see your doctor without delay and get an X-ray.
If the X-ray is inconclusive, a bone scan or M.R.I. should follow. If an abnormality is found, the drug should be stopped and an orthopedist familiar with the problem should be consulted. If keeping weight off the leg does not result in healing, he said, a rod can be surgically inserted in the femur to prevent a fracture.
But Dr. Siris warned against assuming that any pain in the thigh is being caused by the drug. She said too many patients who are at high risk of an osteoporotic fracture stop the drug on their own when in fact the pain could result from sciatica or arthritis in the hip.
As for the risk from calcium supplements, the study that linked them to heart attacks and strokes did not consider how much calcium the women consumed.
Dr. Siris, among others, recommends 1,200 milligrams a day from diet alone or a combination of diet and a supplement. She noted that each serving of dairy (a cup of milk or yogurt or chunk of cheese) provides about 300 milligrams, and most people get another 200 or 300 from nondairy sources.
She said, “If too little calcium is consumed, parathyroid hormone will take calcium from the bones to maintain a normal blood level” of this essential mineral. Vitamin D — about 1,000 to 2,000 international units a day — is also important to assure adequate calcium absorption, especially for those “with bad bones,” she said.
“We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.”~Marcel Proust
