Osteoporosis Update
Recently in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report a study by Judy Stevens, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that the rate of death in elderly people from falling has gone up. Falling is the 14th leading cause of death of elderly people.
Many people fall as they age due to vision loss, inner ear and other balance problems and strength loss.
Hip fractures however have gone down which may be part due to Medicare paying for bone density tests to check for osteoporosis in elderly people since 1998.
More data pointing to a connection between drinking colas and bone loss was reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In this study by Dr Katherine L Tucker of Tufts University in Boston of 2500 people showed that women who drank colas on a daily basis had lower bone mineral density in their hips than those who drank it infrequently. The phosphoric acid in colas impairs the absorption of calcium and increases excretion calcium from the body.
Since 90% of bone mass is in place by the age of 18 it is important that young girls learn how to increase their bone mass. In one promising study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine girls 14 - 16 years old were put into a lifestyle intervention program. In this program the girls had overnight retreats, fitness center membership, individual health coaches and more. After 2 years the girls had increased their spine and thigh bone density and had increased their consumption of calcium, vitamin D and other healthy foods. Now, if they could start programs like this in all schools we would be getting somewhere. Maybe cut down in the obesity problem in kids too!
And lastly, at Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers published a study in Developmental Cell where they demonstrated that a slight modification of the NFATc1 in mice could result in more bone growth presumably by triggering the production of more osteoblasts.
(Technorati Tags: osteoporosis, bone, calcium, death)
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4 Responses to 'Osteoporosis Update'
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on December 18th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
I’m a little unclear on these stats: Are more people actually falling and dying than there used to be, or have other causes of death gone down, thereby elevating the ranking of falling?
It’s a little discouraging to those of us over 30 to realize there’s no way we can put on more bone mass, so I think it’s great that they get the word out to girls.
on December 19th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Actually, I don’t remember now.
Yes, it is scary. I’m pretty high risk for osteoporosis - I’m very petite and very lactose intolerant. When I was younger there was no lactose free milk, no orange juice with calcium, etc. So I got virtually no calcium and since I wasn’t exactly real coordinated I didn’t do a lot of weight bearing exercise either. I’m doing my best now - I just need to learn how to not injure myself when exercising!
Thanks for stopping by!
on June 7th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
It’s a little discouraging to those of us over 30 to realize there’s no way we can put on more bone mass, so I think it’s great that they get the word out to girls.
on February 11th, 2008 at 8:23 am
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