Osteoporosis, a disease of our time
Although osteoporosis is a disease as old as humanity itself, technological advances and scientific progress has identified almost classify it as a disease of recent times.
Is a reduction in bone mass: the loss of bone structure, which determines that it becomes more and more fragile, facilitating the occurrence of fractures resulting from falls, bumps or even spontaneously.
The importance of osteoporosis today is reflected in the expenditure which the disease occurs in the health system in terms of use of medical technology, specific remedies, costs of hospitalization, and others. In the United States for example, spent an estimated 10,000 million dollars annually in the concept.
It affects both sexes, although it may describe today as a field almost exclusively of women, since the risk of getting it is up to seven times higher than in men.
Moreover, although the reasons for which this condition occurs are many, there is a close and direct relationship between osteoporosis and female hormones, particularly estrogen. Thus, all women entering menopause, in which the production of these hormones starts to decline, also enter into a zone of risk. The chance increases with age, as is leaving the body to manufacture these hormones and begin to have a role in this story the aging process.
Other factors also come into play: smoking can double the risk for fractures, alcohol also produces a similar effect.
A diet low in foods with calcium and vitamin D (milk and derivatives, for example) facilitates the emergence of the disease, but some diets of “fashion” that require a high intake of protein may behave similarly.
They also contribute the lack of regular physical exercise, and history of osteoporosis in the family.