It's likely that 90 percent of SportsGeezer readers do not worry about osteopenia, and it's possible that 89 percent believe that osteopenia could be the name of a province of Greece. But it's not. As Kate Murphy explains in the New York Times' Well blog, osteopenia is bone loss that is not severe enough to qualify as osteoporosis, which is something you should worry about. Osteopenia, it turns out, is one of those a new diagnoses that happens to respond well new some new drugs. Osteopenia describes bone density that is below normal, but not low enough to be considered osteoporosis, which would sound perfectly reasonable, except that normal bone density is defined as that of a healthy 30-year-old, and virtually all women begin to lose density sometime after the age of 30. So the real question is: what should women worry about more: normal bone loss, or a normal drug industry that has, since 2003, doubled the sales of osteoporosis drugs, to $8.3 billion?
Health, fitness and lifestyle tips for people over 50 who still like to play hard
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Whew! A name like that had me a little concerned.I’m in my 50’s now and learning a whole host of disorders which could possibly creep up in the next decade or two. I’m not a complete dummy concerning medical maladies. I know OSTEO refers to bone matter- as in buildup of osteophyte or bone loss, and the root word of the PENIA part is what REALLY had me worried. Just what I needed I thought! Arthritis of the uhm ….PENIA!
osteopenia, which is diagnosed by a bone density scan or dexascan, tends to have the diagnosing doctor send the patient (almost always but NOT always a woman) to get the newer drugs such as Fosamax and others. These are life-long drugs unfortunately. Then, for those in worse shape, or those who can’t tolerate the pills, there is an IV infusion that strengthens the bones. If you have true osteopenia or, worse, osteoporosis, its too late to take a lot of calcium pills and eat yogurt, milk or cheese. You can end up with bones with consistancy of spider webs–that is, on x-ray or MRI or CT scan they have big empty spaces in between the bone material. This can lead to easily fracturing any bone but especially the hip bone, in a fall. So, those are the basics. Young kids today drink very little milk compared to earlier generations, more soda, which has phosphorus which actually ADDS to bone loss, and very few green vegetables which also have calcium. They need (or their parents need) to get the message that what they’re ingesting now will have huge effects in adulthood, and not be reversable.