Osteoporosis – Symptoms and Treatment

Osteoporosis can be challenging but with appropriate osteoporosis treatment, one can protect and strengthen their bones. Emoha Elder Care offers at-home nursing by trained nurses to help elderly facing mobility issues and pain.

What is Osteoporosis?

Osteoporosis is a condition causing weakening of bones and increased susceptibility to fracture. Osteoporosis most commonly occurs in older adults, especially women. These people are at a high risk of fractures while doing routine activities such as standing or walking. Most commonly affected bones are the hips, ribs, and the wrist and spine bones. 

Osteoporosis Symptoms:

The early stages don’t cause any osteoporosis symptoms or warning signs. At most, it includes receding gums, weakened grip strength and weak and brittle nails. Later-stage osteoporosis symptoms can be seen when the bone has deteriorated more. It manifests as more obvious symptoms like loss of height due to compression fractures in the spine, fracture from a fall or a minor movement and back or neck pain due to compression fractures of the spine. Osteoporosis symptoms in severe cases include a fracture from a fall or a strong sneeze or cough.

Osteoporosis Risk Factors:
 

The biggest risk factor of osteoporosis is age. With age there’s increased breaking down and less deposition of bone leading to bone that’s less dense and more fragile.

Menopause is another primary risk factor, occurring in women around the ages of 45-55 years. It causes loss in bone density at a higher rate due to the change in hormone levels. By the age of 70, both women and men lose bone at the same rate.

Other risk factors for osteoporosis include having a family history of osteoporosis, poor nutrition, physical inactivity, smoking, low body weight, low testosterone in men, low estrogen in women and taking certain medications that decrease hormone levels.

Having certain medical conditions like kidney failure, malabsorption, multiple sclerosis, leukemia, diabetes, hyperthyroidism, hyperparathyroidism and rheumatoid arthritis increase your risk for osteoporosis.

What osteoporosis is caused by?

Osteoporosis causes can be multiple, depending on person to person. Here are some of the most common reason why you develop osteoporosis  

Use of steroids – Steroids (corticosteroids) are required to eliminate numerous inflammatory conditions including rheumatoid arthritis. It affects the production of bone by decreasing the count of calcium absorbed from the gut and increasing calcium loss from the kidneys. However, if it’s an emergency and severely requires steroids, such as prednisolone for more than 3 to 4 months, then you’ll be prescribed calcium and vitamin D and other medications to prevent any damage done.

Lack of Oestrogen – As we talked earlier about the risk factor of osteoporosis, early menopause or hysterectomy, is a significant cause of Osteoporosis in women. In early menopause, where the ovaries are removed increased the chances of bone weakening. It results due to decrease in the body’s oestrogen production, that makes the bone loss increase rapidly. Although, it’s a rare condition where ovaries are permanently removed. 

Lack of Exercise – Physical activities and exercise promote bone growth and development. Whereas when you don’t exercise, you lose a lot of calcium from the bone, resulting in osteoporosis development. Complete body exercise is important to promote bone growth, hence increasing the muscle strength is vital as muscle and bone health are interconnected. However, excessive exercise in women can cause a stop to periods, which ultimately is a higher risk of osteoporosis by the reduction of oestrogen level in the body. Be careful about exercising – consistent, adequate and comfortable.

Smoking and Drinking – Tobacco is the leading cause of cancer and direct damage to the bones in our body. It’s ill effects also affect our bones growth as it results in reducing the oestrogen level in women causing them to have early menopause. While in men, heavy smoking results in lower testosterone activity and results in weak bone development. Not just smoking, alcohol consumption equally deteriorates our bone growth, by reducing the ability of the body to move. As a result of the inability to move freely, you risk breaking a bone. 

Family History – Osteoporosis is passed down to the progeny so you must be extra careful if someone from your family suffers with it. Bone development is significantly inherited from a close relative who’s undergone a fracture that’s greater than normal. The main reason behind the genetic defect that results in osteoporosis is still unknown, although a rare genetic disorder known as Osteogenesis Imperfecta increases the chances of undergoing fractures and bone damage. 

Diet – Unhealthy food is always a reason for many-body problems. Osteoporosis also happens to an impact of less intake of calcium or vitamin D. If you are underweight, the chances of developing Osteoporosis is quite higher than an obese person. Although both of them would result in body pain so get enough calcium and vitamin D in your diet as possible.

Other Factors – Small but other factors, such as ethnicity, previous bone damage, low body weight or medical conditions like coeliac disease can result in Osteoporosis.

How to prevent Osteoporosis?  

Developing Osteoporosis isn’t pleasant for anyone, but with some lifestyle changes, you’ll never get to experience it. Here are some lifestyle changes we all can do to prevent Osteoporosis from occurring and enhancing our bone growth.  

Exercise 

The only way to greater health and free from ailments of all kinds. Exercise is truly a boon to us that we fail to encapsulate into our life. Our body needs to stay active and healthy, the only way to do it is by regular exercising. Any exercise where the bones are utilized to carry a weight of the body, like walking, running, skipping or any other can promote new bone growth. The earlier you start exercising, the lesser the chances of Osteoporosis happens and the better your bone performance grows.

However, if you already suffer from Osteoporosis, then doing weight-bearing exercise can significantly improve muscle strength and reduce bone loss. But, restricting yourself with one type of exercise isn’t that beneficial, doing all other forms of exercise would severely improve coordination and improve muscle strength. It’s important to focus on muscles as muscle, too, gets old with age and can increase the risk of fractures.

Tai Chi is an impactful activity to reduce clumsiness and risk of falls. To strengthen the muscle in the upper body, lower body and the core, doing Tai Chi regularly would do wonders to your health. It also amplifies your balance. You don’t always have to begin with extreme sets of an exercise, start slow with walking. It’s a simple exercise, requires a little effort to improve your bone strength and maintain a good shape of thigh and hip muscles. Other helpful and effective exercises are aerobics, weight-training, skipping, jogging, running and running.  

Change in Diet & Nutrition

Always, opt for greens, and healthy, that’s packed with loads of nutrition and health benefits. Calcium, one of the most essential elements required to the bones to keep them strong and powerful, needs to in your diet. Here are some of the best sources of calcium to prevent the risk of Osteoporosis.

Sources of Calcium

• Fish with bones, such as tinned Sardines
• Milk, yoghurt, and cheese
• Soya, Rice or Oats
• Cabbage, Kale, Watercress, Broccoli
• Nuts, Seeds, Dried Fruits
• Beans and chickpeas.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D is the essential your bone required to absorb and process calcium. One of the reasons why Osteoporosis progresses rapidly with time is due to inadequate exposure to Vitamin D. It is produced by the body when it is under the exposure of sunlight. It is the major reason why the older age is often prescribed to spend some hours in the sun.

According to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), access to safe sunlight exposure helps to strengthen bone immunity while reducing the chances of skin cancer. You can get Vitamin D apart from the sun, in food items such as oily fishes. Or you can take Vitamin D and calcium supplements available for the treatment of Osteoporosis. 

What is osteoporosis treatment?

A treatment plan specific to you should be made which includes medications as well as lifestyle changes. Eating right and exercising, especially weight-bearing is essential to support the health of your bones. Dietary changes that include bone health promoting nutrients like vitamin D, protein, magnesium, vitamin K, and zinc are an important adjunct to osteoporosis treatment.

There’s no cure for osteoporosis, but appropriate osteoporosis treatment can help protect and strengthen your bones. Osteoporosis symptoms can cause pain and discomfort and in cases of fracture, requires physical assistance for carrying out everyday activities. Emoha Elder Care offers at home nursing by trained nurses to help an elderly facing mobility issues and pain. Apart from home care nursing, physiotherapy, exercising and medication management is also something Emoha provides.

If you feel you are experiencing osteoporosis symptoms or have any questions related to osteoporosis treatment, please feel free to reach out to us on 1800-123-44-5555.

FAQS – All things answered about Osteoporosis