To think osteoporosis is shockingly sidelined by healthcare professionals in the UK

[Pavementworrier]

My mum was recently diagnosed. That in itself isn't such a shock - the bigger shock was that the treatments available are pretty limited with potentially significant side effects. And now I think about it there are things we should all be thinking about to try to limit our own risks. It's easy to forget when young that strength starts with our bones.

More than half of women in the UK will have an osteoporotic fracture and there is risk even if you never have vitamin d deficiency (which almost all of us will at some point). Some medication and food/drinks can put you more at risk but this is never taken into account in prescribing.

Reading today about the plan to give puberty blockers to 200 kids and then follow them for four years. Four years is not enough - osteoporosis is a huge risk of adjusting adolescent hormones and the people conducting the study have a duty to the children for the rest of their lives. What measures will be taken to monitor and protect their future skeletons? I bet none.

Anyway if you are reading this, however old you are, please think about vitamin d supplements, regular exercise and strength training and taking a dexa scan in your forties.

HRT supposedly offers great protection - I am 44 now and not sure when to start for best effect. My periods are irregular but otherwise I feel fine. Would be great if someone would start taking this disease seriously and work out the optimal starting moment!

Come on. Even if you read the Daily Mail or watch Tik Tok there are thousands of articles/videos on there about bone health, it's not a new thing.

No they aren’t. I’d never heard of it before my mother was diagnosed. I was in my 30s. I’m in my late 50s now.

Actually that’s not quite true, I think I had heard of it, but I thought it was kind of inevitable and you only started to suffer when you were very old. Not in your 40s.

Agree. I had heard of it but I thought it was only an issue if you didn't keep on top of normal health. And I don't think, for example, that many women prescribed levothyroxine are told that it can hasten loss of bone density.

Do you mean like a public information campaign? That's a good idea. I must admit I get quite annoyed with some of the public information campaigns, you can't get a bus without being told about lots of horrible diseases that you might get. But yeah, this one doesn't get talked about.

There's a lot of osteoporosis on both sides of my family, men too. Everyone has been treated well and thoroughly. The treatments are not without risk but looking at those people in the family, all dead now, they would've been diagnosed in their 50s and it wasn't common knowledge then.

The thing about building bone density, I think it's worth telling teenagers that. I didn't find school PE any use, particularly as I'm physically incompetent. But as soon as I turned 18, I went to the gym and started doing weights but I was lucky that my uncle told me to do that. But maybe school P E is different now? I certainly hope so.

my parents went on at me about calcium and vitamin D, so I was lucky there too.

dad ended up with osteopenia in spite of his best efforts and he had to take a bunch of stuff but the injection that's available now was not available when he was diagnosed.

It's something that affects more women than men.

Of course it's fucking overlooked! What the hell do you expect?!

The medical profession in the UK to give a remote shit about women?

I mean, come on! Don't be fucking ridiculous now...

(And this is the reality of any health care issue in the UK apart from corporate sponsored breast cancer awareness weeks).

It‘s not just a question of taking or not taking HRT. Two of the most effective ways of preventing osteoporosis are:

• taking Vitamin D (and getting levels checked regularly)
• exercising with weights/dumbbells

It really is. You said yourself that it’s all over Tik Tok. Tik Tok’s been around what?Less than 10 years? Fine for the younger demographic.

I agree with this

The osteoporosis/ osteopenia prevention advice is not rocket science -

eat a healthy balanced diet
don’t smoke
limit processed foods
exercise
weight bearing exercise is good for maintaining bone density
take HRT unless contraindicated -

dexa scans are given to those who require it -
e.g. anorexia

what more can the NHS do ??

@EmeraldRoulette i believe Queen Camilla is a vocal supporter of an osteoporosis charity and has been for some time. Her mother died as a result of osteoporosis, I believe.

Really ??
im knocking on sixty
never been on the tik tok -
this advise / health promotion info has been around for decades !

Treatment for breast cancer. It weakens your bones. And I’m not supposed to have dairy because I have high cholesterol - also a side-effect of treatment.

Exactly and not a chance I'll ever want to take HRT

@Carriemac I think dexa scans should be offered at a certain age… like a mammogram is. That’s what more they can do. Because the indication currently is when a bone is broken, which is too late.

I'm not on Tik Tok (I'm old so do Facebook and YouTube) but that's how young people get their information these days.

I started martial arts 30 years ago and the instructor told us then how important it was to strengthen your bones through exercise. It's not a new thing.

One thing about it being a family problem is that I might not have noticed what messages I was getting outside

Obviously, once you join the gym, they tell you all the benefits of weight-bearing exercise but I don't know what happens to people who never joined

I don't want to take HRT either. The women in my family feel much better after menopause (and live too long as well)

I have had a DEXA scan. All was well, but I was on the pill for a long time. They told me to have another one around menopause age but that happens late in my family so I'm not likely to be due that for ages.

Armed with this knowledge, still some of it is luck because dad had more issues than mum. Mum is now 87 and she had a fall and fractured her wrist, but I think that was inevitable due to the way she fell. Dexa scan after that still said everything was fine.

Dad had a fracture which we think happened because he lifted a suitcase that was probably too heavy for him to lift. Or maybe just bad luck or something.

I had a scan for a health problem and was found to have a fracture I was not aware of - then diagnosed with osteopenia as a result. No idea beforehand. I am now on medications to help with it, but it it were not picked up by accident, I would have no idea and undoubtedly have gone on to develop osteoporosis.

I have no idea why women are not routinely scanned for this past a certain age. There are easy tests which could really help.

But once the dexa shows osteoporosis/
osteopenia it is too late -
you can prevent bone deterioration
you can’t repair it

I've gone to gyms for years and didn't hear anything about strengthening being important until I was already in my 50s - it was always about losing weight.

You can still get it even if you do this. Routine scans are offered in other countries, seems like it could be combined with other health scans to head off problems.

I’m sorry but even on this thread about osteoporosis a lot of people really don’t seem to know much about it. When I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis in my early fifties an enlightened GP sent me for a Dexa and I waltzed in as cocky as anything confident I would be fine. I had a very healthy diet had been a regular gym goer and runner since my early twenties. Had a good BMI. Took Vit D and cod liver oil. Never smoked didn’t drink much. Walked miles every week. I was in fact the poster girl for bone health. I already had osteoporosis. I have since discovered that there are three main risk factors. Early menopause ie done and dusted by 50. A small frame. I am 5’3. Having a diagnosis of RA. Tick tick tick. Good diet healthy living and weight bearing exercise are pretty worthless if you have some or all of these risk factors. As I found out. The ONLY way to be sure is a DEXA. Osteoporosis is completely symptomless until you start breaking bones. I firmly believe that any woman with a risk factor should be scanned.

I recently asked to see the GP when I saw a photo of me taken from behind showing a hump developing - what it looked like to me anyway. I'm two years post menopause. I turn up to find a nurse practiconer who declined to measure mmy height and took a blood test, which apparently was fine. What do they test for?! I later looked at my records to see I was down 1cm lately...could me too small a margin to be significant of course. But I'm concerned, all my issues in menopause were dismissed really. All my joints hurt. I had a rough time on HRT but my private GP (botox - brow collapsed in peri!) suggested I go back on it, aaaggh.

Oh wow, I must've been lucky. I've lived in five different London boroughs and I think it was always on the leaflets they gave us about strength training - the importance of bone density and avoiding osteoporosis.

i'm mostly used "fitness first" back in the day, so I should probably give them a shout out for that useful info. I actually don't know if they still exist, but I don't live in London anymore.

I really wish I could get back into the gym because I do not have space for heavy weights at home. I just don't like the environment any more.

@CandidOP Yes I have RA too and can't have HRT because of prior breast cancer. Can't have a dexa scan in the public system until I'm 50 🫤 Lot's of severe osteoporosis in my family so I'm very worried. I'm late 40s though so I guess it's not too long until I can get a scan.

If you have a bone scan and there's bad news, what can you do with that information?

I agree. I think we need to educate young women about the importance of maximising their bone density in their 20’s. I lift weights now in my 50’s, but it feels a bit like closing the door after the horse has bolted. I would have started in my teens/20’s had I known, but of course it wasn’t really a thing for women to lift weights in the 80’s.