With so little weight on the frame, there was simply no need for the body to produce strong, dense bones. Furthermore, in the haste to cut calories and fat from their diets, these women stopped consuming dairy products and thereby lost their primary source of calcium. Without this mineral circulating in the blood stream, bone formation could not occur. And as other physical processes required calcium, the body began to mine the bones for their mineral content, leaving them further and further decayed. The cultural ideal that drives women to be dangerously thin is nothing new to American society, and this fact leads Turner to believe that decades of women have predisposed themselves to osteoporosis in a short-sighted attempt to feel beautiful.
Doctors keep assuming that osteoporosis results from excessive bone loss in adulthood.