A shocking diagnosis
It took a patch of ice to shatter any illusions Theresa Torgunrud had about the state of her bones. On a bitterly cold January day in Saskatoon, Torgunrud fell getting into her pickup truck. “I lifted my foot up to hop onto the running board and just slipped. I didn’t even go down that hard. But I thought, Whoa, this is awful.”
She was right. The fall had broken Torgunrud’s wrist. Worse was the shocking diagnosis that followed: bone loss bordering on osteoporosis — at age 35.
Mild bone loss, or osteopenia, is caused by decreased bone development. It can leave a woman with poor posture, brittle bones prone to fractures, and a gradual loss of mobility. And it’s the stepping stone to osteoporosis, a full-fledged assault on the skeleton that can lead to the telltale dowager’s hump and impaired mobility.
Too many of us view it as a disease of the elderly, an issue to tackle in the far-off future, like false teeth or incontinence. Yet bone loss can affect women of all ages, with women in their forties particularly vulnerable. And it can be caused by genetics or drugs, diet or allergies, flying under the radar until a random test reveals a fracture.
“Over the years we’ve seen more and more osteoporotic fractures, particularly in the hip and pelvis,” says Hans Kreder, chief of orthopedic surgery at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. He says among the fortysomethings who arrive at his office, awareness of the disease is low; many don’t even realize they have a fracture until the bone scan.
The goods news is that new treatments, from supplements to exercise regimens, can halt osteopenia. Plus, a new drug therapy is in the works.
Who is at risk
Torgunrud, now 40, calls herself a poster child for bone loss. “I have the scrawny body type, a really thin build. As an adolescent, I never cared about calcium or exercise. You go into your twenties and you have too much alcohol and coffee and erratic meals. It’s no surprise I ended up the way I did.” She also says, in her case, there is a hereditary link.
Without exception, all the physicians interviewed for this article say they’re seeing an increase in the number of younger women diagnosed with bone loss. Thirty is the age at which bone growth stops, and by the time a woman is in her forties, estrogen (which helps bones absorb calcium) starts to drop. It’s in their forties that some women also develop reproductive cancers of the breast and ovaries, diagnoses that require drugs to suppress estrogen production.
Caucasians and Asian women are particularly at risk, as are women with small frames and fine bone structures. People with asthma or psoriasis who have been on high-dose steroid therapies can fall prey, as steroids deplete calcium. And anorexia and bulimia, which starve the body of nutrients, can often take a toll on bone health.
Finally, allergies and illness such as celiac disease are also culprits, as they reduce the absorption of calcium from food, says Toronto naturopath Vanessa Lee. “Sensitivities can cause inflammation in the intestines and decrease the absorption of nutrients.” She suggests that women allergic to milk opt for beverages such as fortified rice milk, soymilk or almond milk in addition to the other food options mentioned below.
