What is Osteoporosis and How Does it Affect Your Bone Health?

Featuring Dr. Kam Shojania, MD FRCPC, Rheumatologist
What is Osteoporosis and how does it affect your Bone Health?
Duration: 1 minute, 59 seconds

Osteoporosis is a condition where one’s bones are weak and most people don’t actually know they have osteoporosis.  

You’ll only find out when bones break. And typically, if the fracture occurs at really a low trauma – we call that fragility fracture.

So you may be falling off a bed or a standing position or something where you wouldn’t think someone would be fracturing, and then low and behold, we realize that person has osteoporosis, so most people with osteoporosis don’t know it. Osteoporosis occurs at any age, but it increases as people get older.  

So – and the other risk factors for osteoporosis include things like being a woman, being thin, being older, and having low dietary calcium.  

One big risk factor for osteoporosis that we can fix is smoking. Otherwise, people who have had eating disorders or stomach problems where they don’t absorb food can get osteoporosis, but the biggest risk factors are being female, age, and smoking.  

Now, men can get osteoporosis as well. It also increases with age.  And also, men who have low testosterone, for example, if you’ve had prostate cancer and you're on medications for prostate cancer that reduces testosterone and they could also get osteoporosis.  And again, you’ll know because you fracture at a very minimum trauma. If you have a lot of risk factors for osteoporosis it’d be a good idea to get a bone density scan earlier.  

And if you wonder if you have osteoporosis it’s a good idea to talk to your healthcare provider about your risk factors and whether you need a bone density scan.

Related keywords:

osteoporosis treatment
osteoporosis videos
osteoporosis symptoms
causes of osteoporosis
bone density scan
osteoporosis risk factors
osteoporosis testing
bone density testing
women and osteoporosis
preventing osteoporosis

Presenter: Dr. Kam Shojania, Rheumatologist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Rheumatologist