If your mother or grandmother became noticeably shorter with age, became stooped, or suffered hip or wrist fractures, your chances of having osteoporosis are also very high. Although it strikes both sexes, women are most affected because of their dramatic rate of bone loss in early menopause, when estrogen production wanes. Unfortunately, there are no early symptoms the disease steals silently into victims' lives until their bones are as fragile as dry twigs. They may think of cancer and heart disease as threats and be unaware of the risk of osteoporosis, which is substantially greater. Nor did they know that some 50,000 women die yearly from blood clots and pneumonia, complications of hospitalization for hip fractures, more than succumb to breast cancer, a disease women are more likely to fear.
Some men do develop osteoporosis, but in far fewer numbers than women, and at a later age.
Most men have more bone mass to begin with, and suffer slower bone loss with age than women. They usually weigh more and have larger muscles than women, consume more calcium and get more exercise. Unlike women, men do not have a sudden decline in the sex hormones that protect bone . . . Osteoporosis is painful, disfiguring, and debilitating. Clothing no longer fits, the torso is no longer in proportion to the legs and arms, and strangers stare.