He asked his family physician, Dr. David Hughes of Arlington, who ran some tests and then gave Montgomery some surprising news. Montgomery didn't know what osteoporosis was. As he started doing homework, reading and talking to people about it, he was even more confused. I'd seen older women with dowager humps hobbling around. But I was a strong, active man, and I definitely wasn't old.
Osteoporosis does strike women much more often than it does men.
Eight out of 10 people afflicted with osteoporosis are women. Accelerated by the loss of estrogen during menopause and changes in the way the body uses calcium in the later decades of life, it usually is a disease of old age. But osteoporosis is no respecter of age or gender. It can and does strike men, some because their bones have been damaged by strong medications taken for other conditions, such as steroid treatments for multiple sclerosis. Billie Seely knows all too well that osteoporosis doesn't always wait for old age.