More than half the women in the UK over the age of 50 will suffer a fracture. But can more awareness – and some heavy lifting – help us beat many of the effects of osteoporosis?
Imagine a room full of women. Imagine half of them breaking a bone. What will it be? Hip? Spine? Wrist? Neck? Imagine the plaster casts, the metal screws, the pain, the immobility, the grief – a third of those who break a hip will die within a year, according to the NHS. The Royal Osteoporosis Society says one in two women over 50 in the UK will get a fracture due to osteoporosis. And that just doesn’t need to happen.
Thanks to many factors, including neglect and gender bias in medicine, midlife women are not told about the simple preventive measures they can take to maintain healthy bones. “Your bones are silent until they break. And then they scream,” says Dr Vonda Wright, a campaigning American orthopaedic surgeon and the author of Fitness After 40: How to Stay Strong at Any Age.
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