You might be wrong if you think you know enough about osteoporosis. This is because much of the information we have been given about osteoporosis is incomplete, as Western medicine has made certain limiting assumptions.
Osteoporosis is a disorder of older women.
Osteoporosis is caused by deficiencies of calcium and estrogen. Let's critique these assumptions from an anthropological perspective. This is an important task, for osteoporosis is often life-threatening to women. Far from being limited to the very elderly, osteoporosis is a major orthopedic disorder in more than 25 percent of all post-menopausal women in this country. Even young women are not free from the specter of osteoporosis, as a woman loses a full half of the bone she will lose during her lifetime between the ages of 35 and 50.