Any fitness-oriented males here gotten a Bone-focused DEXA scan? What were the results? What age did you do it? As a long-time athlete is this something people like me have to worry about?
More men are now living long enough to develop osteoporosis. But few are aware of the risk, and fewer still are screened and treated.
Ronald Klein was biking around his neighborhood in North Wales, Pa., in 2006 and tried to jump a curb. “But I was going too slow — I didn’t have enough momentum,” he recalled.
As the bike toppled, he thrust out his left arm to break the fall. It didn’t seem like a serious accident, yet “I couldn’t get up.”
At the emergency room, X-rays showed that he had fractured both his hip, which required surgical repair, and his shoulder. Dr. Klein, a dentist, went back to work in three weeks, using a cane. After about six months and plenty of physical therapy, he felt fine.
But he wondered about the damage the fall had caused. “A 52-year-old is not supposed to break a hip and a shoulder,” he said. At a follow-up visit with his orthopedist, “I said, ‘Maybe I should have a bone density scan.’”
As he suspected, the test showed that he had developed osteoporosis, a progressive condition, increasing sharply with age, that thins and weakens bones and can lead to serious fractures. Dr. Klein immediately began a drug regimen and, now 70, remains on one.
Osteoporosis occurs so much more commonly in women, for whom medical guidelines recommend universal screening after age 65, that a man who was not a health care professional might not have thought about a scan. The orthopedist didn’t raise the prospect.
But about one in five men over age 50 will suffer an osteoporotic fracture in his remaining years, and among older adults, about a quarter of hip fractures occur in men.
Professional associations like the Endocrine Society and the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research recommend that men over 50 who have a risk factor, and all men over 70, should seek screening.
“If you had a fracture after age 50, you should have a bone scan — that’s one of the key indicators,” Dr. Orwoll advised.
Other risk factors: falls, a family history of hip fractures, and a fairly long list of other health conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, hyperthyroidism and Parkinson’s disease. Smoking and excessive alcohol use increase the odds of osteoporosis as well.
“A number of medications also do a number on your bone density,” Dr. Colon-Emeric added, notably steroids and prostate cancer drugs.
Read the full story: Why Brittle Bones Aren’t Just a Woman’s Problem (NYT)
, and TRT.