Posts Tagged ‘Fragility Fracture’
Men Too
“Men are from Mars”, so March is a good time to think about men, the overlooked minority in osteoporosis. The American Journal of Men’s Health has published a study of osteoporosis screening rates for men over age 70. The results are discouraging.
Osteoporosis screening at age 70 for men with no identified risk factors, and earlier for those with known risk factors, has been recommended by the National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF) and Medicare since 2008. 25 % of persons known to have osteoporosis are men. Yet we still perceive osteoporosis to be women only . We ignore the male minority.
What is Clinical Osteoporosis?
Increased Fracture Risk is Clinical Osteoporosis. Clinical Osteoporosis is a diagnosis. It is a chronic medical condition that you have for the rest of your life, like high blood pressure. It can never be fully “cured”, but it can be fully controlled. That is what we do. We help you to Take Control.
Confusion arises because”osteoporosis” is also a Bone Mineral Density (BMD) test result, as measured by DXA. Persons with “osteoporosis” for a test result are at high risk, but so are many with “osteopenia”. In fact 6 times as many people with “osteopenia” have Fragility Fractures as people with “osteoporosis” test scores. Fractures and fracture risk matter more than test scores.
A Happy and Healthy New Year
Happy New Year. This is the first day of the rest of your life. If you could have anything at all, what would it be? Good Health should be at the top of the list!
We know we should worry about heart attacks, breast (or prostate) cancer, and stroke. But more women have unnecessary Fragility Fractures each year than all 3 of the above combined. More men have Fragility Fractures each year than any one of the above. Bummer…….
When should you start working toward good Bone Health? Before a fracture would be a good time. When is that? Now, but how?