OSTEOPOROSIS: INTRODUCTION
Scene: Any busy high street.
A frail, bent old woman totters along slowly with a cane.
Is she your mother? Your older sister?
Or is it you in ten – twenty – thirty years?
Genetically, our bodies have changed little in 40,000 years, and maybe women’s bodies were not meant to endure beyond their reproductive period. With increasing longevity, the problem of brittle fracturing bones is quickly approaching a crisis.
In England and Wales in 1981 there were more than 2400 people over the age of 100. By the year 2010 the postwar ‘baby boomers’ will give the population a sudden overlay of grey, a society of the elderly.
According the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, more than 9 million of the UK population are over the age of sixty-five, and of that number nearly 5.5 million are women.
Maintaining health and vigour in later years may depend on where you live: certain parts of the world — the Caucasus region in the Soviet Republic of Georgia, Kashmir, and Vilacabamba high in the Andes of Ecuador — all claim many inhabitants of well over 100.
When humans first evolved, bodies were designed to last between twenty and thirty years. From around 3000 BC to AD 1900, there was a gain of about twenty-nine years in the average life span. The biological limit is somewhere between 110 and 120 years. Can we alter the fundamental ageing programme in our genes, through genetic manipulation? It may sound like science fiction, but it certainly is possible. There is still much more to know about the genes that regulate longevity.
Originally ‘hunter-gatherers’, human tribes roamed the forests and plains for fruits, fibrous plant materials, roots, nuts, berries and only small amounts of lean meat were consumed when the hunt was successful. Humans naturally exercised muscles to find nutrients in order to survive. Designed for the tropics, skin naturally absorbed the sun’s rays in clear air.
Modern medicine and science have made vast strides in combatting many infectious diseases, and the leading causes of illness and death now are chronic degenerative problems such as heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis. Many health problems can be prevented or alleviated by improved nutrition or a change in lifestyle.
For the past fifty years, the medical profession has officially regarded nutrition as unimportant. But the medical journal The Lancet, now reflects a reversal of this view in more recent articles, veering towards the opinion that nutrition should be a major concern for all of us. The Royal College of Physicians recommends that all adults should remain physically active throughout life -taking more exercise, eating more fibre and less fat and sugar.
According to Dr Robert Butler, former head of the US National Institute on Aging, and now Brookdale Professor of Geriatrics and Adult Development at Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York City: ‘Physical fitness can’t be stressed enough. You need a nutritive diet, and enough exercise to maintain good heart function and increase bone strength.’
A problem of particular importance to every woman is osteoporosis. It is not new: archaeologists excavating in Northern Chile found well-preserved mummies of the Chinchorro culture of 7000 years ago. Among the Chinchorro, 31 per cent of the population had osteoporosis, all sufferers being women and two-thirds of them were under forty.
Osteoporosis is now so common, reaching the proportions of an epidemic, that all women should want to adopt a lifetime of good nutrition and a lifestyle that will protect their bones. The affliction ranks close behind arthritis as a major chronic disease of older people, especially women, and yet to a large extent it could be prevented. Although there is much that scientists do not yet understand about this disorder, evidence suggests that simple changes in lifestyle may prevent, or at least slow down, its development. In many cases, it is needless and preventable!
The key to fighting osteoporosis is understanding what it is, knowing while you are still young if you may be at risk, and what you can do to lessen its effects.
The National Osteoporosis Society estimates that up to 10 per cent of women can expect a broken hip. There are up to 50,000 hip fractures (fractures of the neck of the femur) each year in Britain, especially among women past the menopause, with osteoporosis often the underlying cause. The additional cost of medical care in the United Kingdom (including private and National Health Service treatment) for patients with hip fractures is about ?500 million each year.
Recent studies indicate the highest incidence of these fractures to be in Britain, New Zealand and Sweden. Many suffer from weakened vertebrae and may have chronic spinal problems. It is estimated that one-sixth of these victims die from ensuing complications of their fractures, and countless more are disabled permanently.
So the good news is that people in Western countries are living longer; the bad news is that osteoporosis is becoming a potential problem for greater numbers of women. The question facing each of us is how much we want to take charge to get the utmost out of our lives.
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