Osteoporosis

By Melissa Abramovitz

While osteoporosis or porous bones may not be a concern for your students as it is an aging disease, there are still things they can do to ensure that the gradual bone loss that will occur in their lives can be staved off. Because it's a common condition, it will touch their lives through people the love. This book helps to explain what it is, what causes it, and preventative measures that can be done at any age to curb the effects of bone lose. Medical advances are also discussed. The bright photographs, charts, diagrams, and sidebars share important information that is perfect for report writers and researchers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rosen Publishing
• Release date: Feb 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781420506433

Melissa Abramovitz

Melissa Abramovitz lives in Roseville, California, and writes nonfiction books for all age groups. She is the author of hundreds of magazine articles, more than 40 educational books for children and teenagers, numerous poems and short stories, and several children’s picture books. She has a degree in psychology from the University of California San Diego and is a graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature. Visit her online at www.melissaabramovitz.com.

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© 2011 Gale, Cengage Learning

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyrighted material.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Abramovitz, Melissa, 1954-Osteoporosis / by Melissa Abramovitz.

p. cm. -- (Diseases & disorders)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4205-0339-5 (hardcover: alk. paper)

1. Osteoporosis. I. Title.

RC931.O73A27 2011 616.7'16--dc22

2010035232

Lucent Books

27500 Drake Rd.

 Farmington Hills, MI 48331

ISBN-13: 978-1-4205-0339-5

ISBN-10: 1-4205-0339-1

Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 14 13 12 11 10

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Osteoporosis: A Concern for Young and Old

Chapter 1

What Is Osteoporosis?

Chapter 2

Risk Factors and Causes

Chapter 3

Prevention and Treatment

Chapter 4

Living with Osteoporosis

Chapter 5

The Future

Notes

Glossary

Organizations to Contact

For More Information

Index

Picture Credits

About the Author

FOREWORD

The Most Difficult Puzzles Ever Devised

Charles Best, one of the pioneers in the search for a cure for diabetes, once explained what it is about medical research that intrigued him so. It’s not just the gratification of knowing one is helping people, he confided, although that probably is a more heroic and selfless motivation. Those feelings may enter in, but truly, what I find best is the feeling of going toe to toe with nature, of trying to solve the most difficult puzzles ever devised. The answers are there somewhere, those keys that will solve the puzzle and make the patient well. But how will those keys be found?

Since the dawn of civilization, nothing has so puzzled people— and often frightened them, as well—as the onset of illness in a body or mind that had seemed healthy before. A seizure, the inability of a heart to pump, the sudden deterioration of muscle tone in a small child—being unable to reverse such conditions or even to understand why they occur was unspeakably frustrating to healers. Even before there were names for such conditions, even before they were understood at all, each was a reminder of how complex the human body was, and how vulnerable.

While our grappling with understanding diseases has been frustrating at times, it has also provided some of humankind’s most heroic accomplishments. Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery in 1928 of a mold that could be turned into penicillin has resulted in the saving of untold millions of lives. The isolation of the enzyme insulin has reversed what was once a death sentence for anyone with diabetes. There have been great strides in combating conditions for which there is not yet a cure, too. Medicines can help AIDS patients live longer, diagnostic tools such as mammography and ultrasounds can help doctors find tumors while they are treatable, and laser surgery techniques have made the most intricate, minute operations routine.

This toe-to-toe competition with diseases and disorders is even more remarkable when seen in a historical continuum. An astonishing amount of progress has been made in a very short time. Just two hundred years ago, the existence of germs as a cause of some diseases was unknown. In fact, it was less than 150 years ago that a British surgeon named Joseph Lister had difficulty persuading his fellow doctors that washing their hands before delivering a baby might increase the chances of a healthy delivery (especially if they had just attended to a diseased patient)!

Each book in Lucent’s Diseases and Disorders series explores a disease or disorder and the knowledge that has been accumulated (or discarded) by doctors through the years. Each book also examines the tools used for pinpointing a diagnosis, as well as the various means that are used to treat or cure a disease. Finally, new ideas are presented—techniques or medicines that may be on the horizon.

Frustration and disappointment are still part of medicine, for not every disease or condition can be cured or prevented. But the limitations of knowledge are being pushed outward constantly; the most difficult puzzles ever devised are finding challengers every day.

INTRODUCTION

Osteoporosis: A Concern for Young and Old

The thin, fragile bones that characterize osteoporosis mostly affect older women, but men and young people get this disease as well. Of the 10 million Americans who currently have osteoporosis, about 8 million are women and 2 million are men. Worldwide, the International Osteoporosis Foundation says that one in three women and one in five men have osteoporosis, for a total of more than 200 million people. And although osteoporosis is very rare in children and young teens, it does occur in a substantial number of older teens and young adults. A University of Arkansas study found, for example, that 2 percent of college-aged women in the United States have osteoporosis, and 15 percent more have the low bone mass that places them at risk for the disease.

Furthermore, the biological processes that result in osteoporosis begin in childhood and adolescence, and certain habits and behaviors in young people can determine whether or not they eventually get osteoporosis. According to the authors of Strong Women, Strong Bones, The bones we have later in life reflect what we did as kids, teens, and young adults. So in a very real sense, osteoporosis is a disease that starts in childhood.¹ Thus, although many people believe that osteoporosis is just of concern for older women, medical experts emphasize that people of both sexes and all ages should be aware of this painful and often devastating disease.

A Widespread but Largely Preventable Problem

Osteoporosis can lead to severe pain, disability, emotional suffering, and even death for those who have it. Many affected individuals have chronic back pain and a hunched posture from fractures in the spine caused by osteoporosis. Others break a hip and are unable to ever live independently again, and many die from complications of these fractures. The National Osteoporosis Foundation estimates that about 24 percent of the approximately three hundred thousand people who fracture a hip each year die within one year. And many people experience serious depression and withdrawal from society because they are so afraid of breaking bones that they sit at home and feel hopeless.

Fortunately, there are things people can do to prevent osteoporosis. Young women and adolescents are in the best position to lower their osteoporosis risk. By getting adequate calcium, vitamin D, and exercise and avoiding tobacco, caffeine, and alcohol, they can build a strong, dense skeleton that can better withstand bone loss in their later years,² say the authors of A Woman Doctor’s Guide to Osteoporosis. The same recommendations apply to young men as well, and experts say older people can also reduce their risk by following these guidelines.

Unfortunately, people rarely think about the dangers of osteoporosis and tend to not pay attention to physicians’ and government agencies’ recommendations about a nutritious diet and regular, moderate exercise. A 2004 report on bone health issued by the United States surgeon general revealed, for example, that nine out of ten teenaged girls in the United States fail to get enough calcium.

Many young people also