Sedentary existence, no weight bearing activity or exercise will increase one's risk. And then there are some nutritional factors, inadequate calcium is an obvious one. Then physical characteristics, such as being small boned and thin, place patients at greater risk. The other question that we may have is that there are certain medications and diseases that place a patient at risk for osteoporosis. And that includes the medicine steroids that might be taken for asthma or arthritis, and any chronic disease such as diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis might place the patient at greater risk.
Osteoporosis develops because of an imbalance of bone formation and bone loss.
In most cases, bone loss exceeds bone formation, leading to a gradual decrease in the amount of bone. There are five current FDA approved treatments for prevention and treatment of osteoporosis, and the most recent was approved about two weeks ago. Compared to ten or fifteen years ago, we have a large group of medications that have proven value in maintaining or increasing bone mass, and even with patients with established osteoporosis, we can decrease the rate of fractures by about 50 percent. I've been interested in the affect of dietary magnesium and its deficiency and its role in osteoporosis. Magnesium is an essential nutrient that plays an important role in calcium metabolism, and it appears from large studies that the amount of bone one has correlates well with the amount of magnesium in one's diet.