With osteoporosis, 'prevention is key'

Aug. 21--PITTSBURGH -- Janet Fusco began going to exercise classes offered through UPMC a few weeks ago to keep her bones strong and healthy.

The 63-year-old Scott Township resident is at higher risk of being diagnosed with osteoporosis. She's been on a breast cancer treatment medication for the past five years that elevates her risk, and being a postmenopausal woman heightens her risk, too.

Both of those things result in decreased levels of estrogen in a woman's body, which helps to keep bones strong.

"It's really preventative," Fusco said of her thrice weekly exercise regimen. "... So far, I have had very little bone loss. It's not noticeable, but to really try to prevent, because of my age, and just worrying about losing bone density, I decided to get more active."

Nearly 25 percent of women ages 65 or older have osteoporosis of the femur, neck or spine, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Men in the same age group have about a 5 percent occurrence of those kinds of osteoporosis.

Medication, exercise, diet and supplements can all play a role in maintaining or strengthening bones, said Dr. Mary Peterson, director of the Midlife Health Center at UPMC Magee-Women's Hospital in Pittsburgh.

One big hurdle with osteoporosis is that it's often asymptomatic until a patient gets a fracture. Sometimes patients don't even know they've had a fracture until an X-ray confirms it.

"The most common places to get osteoporosis are in your spine, in your hip and in your femoral neck, which is when people break their hips, that's really what they're breaking is their femoral neck," Peterson said. "...When you break your hip, absolutely you know you broke your hip. It hurts really badly. But for spine fractures, about a third of those will be painful, but there are a lot of women who've had fractures of their spine and never knew it because it wasn't painful."

Other risk factors for getting osteoporosis, besides older age and steroid and breast cancer medications, include being thin, being Caucasian and being a smoker, Peterson said.

Medications to treat osteoporosis are helpful, which can help build bone and decrease the risk of bone fractures, but doing other things can help too. Exercise builds muscle, which in turn strengthens and better protects bones. Keeping a balanced diet and being aware of nutrient intake is important too.

"It's better to just not to get osteoporosis in the first place," Peterson said. "Prevention is the key, key thing. So starting young and making sure you're getting your vitamin D and your calcium and make sure you're doing weight bearing exercise all your life, and staying active and keeping your core strong, all of those things are really going to make a huge difference for patients."

Fusco makes sure she does anything she can to prevent an osteoporosis diagnosis. In addition to working out, she said she keeps a well-balanced diet and has lost weight.

"I listen to my doctors. They've given me great advice. When I started going to my gynecologist, she's like, you need to start working out, and when I started, she's like, well you need to do a little bit more," she said. "I think you just have to really pay attention to your body, and also, do everything that you can possibly do to make yourself healthy that's in your control."

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