Osteoporosis ? Symptoms and Causes of Osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is accelerated bone loss. Normally, there is loss of bone mass with aging, perhaps 0.7% per year in adults. However, bone loss is greater in women past menopause than in men of the same age. The process of bone remodelling from resorption to matrix synthesis to mineralization normally takes about 8 months–a slow but constant process. Bone in older persons just isn’t as efficient as bone in younger persons at maintaining itself–there is decreased activity of osteoblasts and decreased production of growth factors and bone matrix.

Osteoporosis causes, diagnosis, symptoms, risk factors, prevention, and treatment. Osteoporosis is a disease that causes bones to weaken, become brittle and more easily breakable. The osteoporosis disease process can be silent (without symptoms) for decades. It’s a harse reality that the drugs we take to treat arthritis, especially the corticosteroids, also wreak havoc on our bones.

Osteoporosis occurs when the resorption causes the bones to reach a fracture threshold (the point at which they are likely to break when subjected to a modest stress, such as falling). A fall, blow or lifting action that would not normally bruise or strain the average person can easily break one or more bones in someone with severe osteoporosis.

Symptoms of Osteoporosis

Bone pain is seen less commonly than joint pain and muscle pain. The source of bone pain may be obvious, as in a fracture following an accident. Or it may be more subtle, such as cancer that spreads (metastasizes) to the bone.

Hip fractures typically occur as a result of a fall. With osteoporosis, hip fractures can occur as a result of trivial accidents. Hip fractures may also be difficult to heal after surgical repair because of poor bone quality.

An abnormally curved upper back, or dowager’s hump, develops when the bones of the upper spine (vertebrae) become thin and brittle (known as osteoporosis) and collapse on each other. Having collapsed vertebrae in any part of the spine results in a loss of height.

The appearance of the widow’s hump or a fractured wrist or hip from a fall may be the first actual symptoms of osteoporosis unless your doctor has been measuring your bone density. Men also should watch for a loss of height, change in posture or sudden back pain. There are a number of risk factors that increase a person’s likelihood of having osteoporosis.

Pain, disfigurement, and debilitation are common in the latter stages of the disease. Early spinal compression fractures may go undetected for a long time, but after a large percentage of calcium has been lost, the vertebrae in the spine start to collapse, gradually causing a stooped posture called kyphosis, or a “dowager???s hump.” Although this is usually painless, patients may lose as much as 6 inches in height.

Causes of Osteoporosis

Osteoporosis occurs when an imbalance occurs between new bone formation and old bone resumption. The body may fail to form enough new bone, or too much old bone may be reabsorbed, or both.

The strength of your bones depends on their size and density; bone density depends in part on the amount of calcium, phosphorus and other minerals bones contain. When your bones contain fewer minerals than normal, they’re less strong and eventually lose their internal supporting structure.

The leading cause of osteoporosis is a lack of certain hormones, particularly estrogen in women and androgen in men. Women, especially those older than 60 years, are frequently diagnosed with the disease. Menopause brings lower estrogen levels and increases a woman???s risk for osteoporosis. Other factors that may contribute to bone loss in this age group include inadequate intake of calcium and vitamin D, lack of weight-bearing exercise, and other age-related changes in endocrine functions (in addition to lack of estrogen).

One Major Osteoporosis Symptom! This is the First Sign of Osteoporosis!

No one wants to live a life filled with the fear that a slight fall or bump might snap a bone in two but this is what Osteoporosis can do to you. It makes sense then that you want to find out as early as possible an Osteoporosis symptom, some sign of Osteoporosis or hint so you can maybe counter it or seek medical advice.

Unfortunately for us there is no symptom or sign of this disease until your doctor tells you! However there IS one sign that you may be on your way to getting this terrible disease and it has nothing to do with your bones at first glance.

What did you eat in the last week? What are your general dietary habits? Lots of meat? Heaps of processed and salty foods? Soft drinks? Do you exercise? If you do do you do any weight based training? Do you smoke or drink to excess?

We have just found our symptoms right there! Osteoporosis is not some disease caused by genetics it is a condition we in the western world in particular bring upon ourselves with our lifestyle and eating habits!

You see bone is constantly being renewed in a cycle where cells called osteoclasts seek through bone finding old parts and destroying them leaving an empty space, this space in turn is sought out by cells called osetoblasts which then refill the space with new healthy bone. Osteoporosis is caused by there being too many gaps for the osteoblasts to fill leaving a honeycomb of bone that is weak and fragile and prone to breakages.

So how does our diet and lifestyle influence this you ask? Blood. When our blood becomes too acidic which is very easy with high protein diets especially it starts to strip calcium away from the bone to balance the bloods acid levels, however this calcium is not deposited back into the bone.

“Hey wait! I drink heaps of milk and eat lots of dairy food I should have lots of calcium!”. Nice try but unfortunately dairy products also increase the acidity of your blood making the gain from dairy on its own negligible.

Weight based training also helps the body promote healthy bones and muscles around those bones and should not be overlooked!

So when you want to check for some sign of Osteoporosis remember it is your lifestyle that will determine this condition. There is no other Osteoporosis symptom!

Osteoporosis Symptoms

In this article I would like to cover the subject of Osteoporosis symptoms, and what to look out for and at what age. With most people you?re never too young to think about what causes Osteoporosis as it can affect young people as well as the old. In most cases it tends to affect women more than men as this is down to the hormonal change during the menopause. But on saying that the Osteoporosis symptoms can occur at any age especially if the person?s diet is not as it should be. An example of this and hopefully your not in this category is that of anorexics who tend to have very little meat on their bones, and have not had the right intake of vitamins and normal supplements. Osteoporosis symptoms are usually very hard to detect and in most cases the first you will know about whether you have Osteoporosis or not is when you end up in hospital due to a broken or fractured bone. Another group of people who are at risk are those who exercise to the point they are thin or have very little body fat. Many a marathon runner has suffered with brittle bones due to their way of life. Having Osteoporosis symptoms means that your bones will become very brittle and that without to much effort your bones will break or fracture. A simple fall or a knock can break things like your leg bones, hip bones, and wrist bones. There are many ways that you can combat Osteoporosis and most of them are with taking a proper diet. If you?re a woman of menopausal age try taking the extra vitamins to replace those lost due to your time of life. If you talk this over with your Doctor I?m sure he will suggest the right type of supplements you need. Summing up can be simplified, and affective Osteoporosis treatment can be made by first taking care of your diet and make sure that it is mainly on the alkaline side rather than the acidic. Many articles and books are available on this subject and it?s never too late in life to make that effective change to keep away the problems concerned with Osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis Symptoms. the Tell-tale Signs of Osteoporosis

The fear that every day you may break a bone or be heading towards a quality of life hindered by a stoop or hip problems can be terrifying; this is what Osteoporosis can do to you! Everyone would like to know what Osteoporosis symptoms are so at the first signs of Osteoporosis they can seek medical advice. The only problem is there are NO clear symptoms of Osteoporosis! Pains in the hip and spine may sometimes trigger people to seek medical advice but there are many conditions and ways you can hurt those parts of your body. So what can you do to find out if you have or might get Osteoporosis?

First we need to look at what Osteoporosis is and what causes it.

Osteoporosis is a condition where the bones of the body start to lose density and become more frail and prone to breaking. It can also cause bone to collapse upon itself creating a “dowagers hump” when the spine and hip compact together.

How do our bones become so frail though? This is because bone is a living tissue that is constantly being regrown using two major cells in bone forming; osteoclasts and osteoblasts. Simply put osteoclasts are cells that move through the bone looking for old parts that need renewal and destroy that old bone leaving a gap. Osteoblasts are cells that move through the bone looking for those empty spaces and fill them with new bone. In this way the bone is renewed all the time.

Osteoporosis is the condition when there are not enough osteoblasts to fill all of the gaps left by the osteoclasts leaving the bone peppered with many, many small gaps that lower bone density and cause the fragility of your bones.

So we can ask what are the symptoms of losing osteoblasts?

Unfortunately this is not something we can see or measure easily by ourselves; instead we must look at WHY we would lose so many osteoblasts and track down the root causes of Osteoporosis.

The primary cause of this poor bone renewal is in our blood. If the blood in our body is too acidic it can strip away calcium from the bone to restore a healthy blood balance, however this calcium is not replaced quickly enough to the bones and the osteoblasts cannot keep up. This acidic blood is mainly caused by diets high in meat, processed food and oddly enough dairy products. While dairy products put calcium into your body they also acidize the blood making those gains worthless combined with other dietary deficiencies and chemical intake like smoking, excessive alcohol and poor exersize (especially lack of weight training).

So what does all this mean? What Osteoporosis symptoms are there? Well, if you follow the causes of the condition we see diet is the main factor. While we cannot sense nor feel the bone fragility we can inspect our diet, and lifestyle if it is too full of foods that will make your blood more acidic and is lacking in good weight based exercise there is a very good chance your body will start stripping away your precious bones! The only real way to test for signs of osteoporosis and check your bone density is by seeing a doctor and asking for a specialized test called a ‘bone mineral density’ (BMD) test.