Help For Brittle Bones

Osteoporosis needn’t be a dire diagnosis. Here are some steps you can take to keep yourself strong and healthy

- Anita Bartholomew

Neelam Agarwal, a 57-year-old homemaker from Noida, UP, was in the thick of festival celebrations, practicing her dance steps for a special show when she started experiencing pain in her right foot. Slowly, the pain exacerbated to a point where she had to stop and sit down. By the time she reached home, tears streamed down her face from sheer physical agony. Her family rushed her to the hospital where an X-ray revealed a hairline fracture. Her doctor said it was because of osteoporosis.

It turned out Neelam had a long history that contributed to the incident. Her mother had suffered from Parkinson’s disease, osteoporosis, and osteoarthritis, putting Neelam at risk for bone, joint and neurological disorders. She had also experienced debilitating foot pain after a hysterectomy done in her 30s, and a fracture when she slipped and fell in the bathroom at age 50.

Like Neelam, many people with a family history of fractures and breaks tend to view them as isolated events, but it’s likely that such episodes indicate a deeper, more insidious, problem— weak bones caused by a large variety of factors including poor diet, lack of exercise, menopause, age and even side effects of medication.

WHAT IS OSTEOPOROSIS?

The term osteoporosis means, literally, ‘porous bone’. The inside of our bones resembles a honeycomb, a web of cells that break down and are replenished with new ones, just like the cells in other parts of our bodies.

But, sometimes, the spaces in that honeycomb-like structure become too great when new bone cells are not replenished, making our bones even more fragile and brittle. The point at which bone density becomes low enough to be considered a serious condition is called osteoporosis. It leads to weakness of the skeleton and increased risk of fractures, particularly of the spine, wrist, hip, pelvis, and upper arm, sometimes with fatal consequences.