Osteopenia Signs & Symptoms
Many people with osteopenia have no symptoms at all and aren’t aware of their condition. When they do occur, some of the most common osteopenia signs and symptoms include:
- Suffering from one or more bone fractures or breaks.
- When a bone break occurs, it’s most likely to affect someone’s hip, ankle, the spine or a wrist.
- Dealing with bone pains and other aches that affect tissues near the bones, including the joints.
- Trouble exercising normally due to pains or injuries.
What is Osteoporosis
- Osteoporosis is defined as “a bone disease that occurs when the body loses too much bone, makes too little bone, or both.”
- Osteoporosis is generally seen in women over the age of 50, although younger women and men too can develop this condition.
- It is estimated that about one in two women (50 percent) and up to one in four men (25 percent) over the age of 50 will break a bone at some point due to osteoporosis.
- When viewed under a microscope, osteoporotic bones visibly contain abnormal tissue structure.
- Osteoporosis occurs when small holes or weakened areas are formed in the bones that can lead to bone fractures, bone pain and sometimes other complications such as a Dowager’s hump (an abnormal outward curvature of the thoracic vertebrae of the upper back, causing the appearance of a hump).
How does osteoporosis compare to osteopenia?
- Osteopenia is another condition that’s associated with bone loss and weakened bones, but it’s not as severe as in osteoporosis is.
Here’s how Harvard Medical School explains it:
- Both conditions are varying degrees of bone loss, as measured by bone mineral density, a marker for how strong a bone is and the risk that it might break. If you think of bone mineral density as a slope, normal would be at the top and osteoporosis at the bottom. Osteopenia, which affects about half of Americans over age 50, would fall somewhere in between.
For more information about Bone Health please consider purchasing our Bone health webinar:
https://total-health.com.au/webinars-workshops/webinars/all-about-bone-health
