Raising Awareness about Osteoporosis
I was recently contacted about a website regarding osteoporosis, and the line that grabbed my attention in the e-mail was “one in four Canadian women over 50 have osteoporosis”.
I’m nowhere near 50, but I know many people who are over 50 or who are approaching that age mark. Osteoporosis is something that all of us who are under 50 should also work toward taking preventative measures.
What is Osteoporosis?
So what exactly is osteoporosis? From the onthegowomen.ca website, osteoporosis is “a common disease in which your bones become brittle and more porous”. *Shudder*.
Often people don’t realize they’re at risk until they’ve already fractured a bone. Many could be going about their lives with weakened bones without even realizing it.
Some of the dangers of osteoporosis are that a fracture or a break in bones can lead to chronic pain and decreased mobility. This is really important quality of life that we’re talking about here: when we aren’t as able to move around independently, it removes much of our options for what we can do in everyday living.
In order to prevent osteoporosis, some of the main things that we can do are to make sure we are getting the right amount of calcium and vitamin D in our diet and that we are exercising regularly. Check out the onthegowomen.ca website for more information about osteoporosis. And please share the link to this blog post and/or to the website in order to spread awareness about osteoporosis so that everyone can take preventative measures and keep their bodies healthy!
Great information, Sagan! Thank you (from one of the 50+ crowd :))
Such an important topic & although I love to lift weights, I know it is important to prevent this as well as enough vitamins & minerals & nutrients!
The scary thing people don’t know, often on hip fractures, the bone breaks before the actual fall! YES!
An ethical note:
That web site was developed by Novartis Pharmaceuticals, and following through the quizzes, etc., will lead you to drug therapies rather than lifestyle prevention options.
Perhaps a government, nonprofit, or physicians’ association resource would be preferable to corporate one (even if it does appropriately reference much of its information, which I like). just food for thought.
And here I was thinking that I’d done a pretty decent job of looking around their site. Apparently not. Good thing I have you, m’dear.