Everyone is familiar with "osteoporosis", it is a common disease that seriously threatens the health of the elderly, with high morbidity, high disability, high mortality, high medical expenses and low quality of life a low").
People often think that osteoporosis is an irresistible and inevitable result of the aging of the body, and its prevention and education are far less important than diabetes and thyroid diseases. Therefore, there are many misunderstandings among ordinary people, and even many grass-roots doctors have disagreements about this. Less misunderstandings.
Here, make a popular science on the common problems related to osteoporosis, in order to help readers.
Common misconceptions about osteoporosis
Osteoporosis is a syndrome of abnormal bone metabolism characterized by decreased bone mass, destruction of bone tissue microarchitecture, increased bone fragility, and susceptibility to fractures. It has a high incidence, a long course of disease, and is often accompanied by complications such as fractures, which significantly reduces the quality of life of patients, and even causes disability and death. Therefore, it has become one of the chronic diseases that seriously threaten human health. Therefore, the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis is particularly important. Although everyone has a certain understanding of the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis, there are still some misunderstandings.
01
Older people have osteoporosis
Usually everyone thinks that only the elderly will get osteoporosis and need to take calcium tablets, but this is not the case. Osteoporosis is divided into three categories: primary osteoporosis, secondary osteoporosis and idiopathic osteoporosis.
Among them, primary osteoporosis mainly includes senile osteoporosis and postmenopausal osteoporosis. This type of osteoporosis is more common in the elderly and has nothing to do with young people.
Secondary osteoporosis is secondary to a variety of factors, such as long-term use of glucocorticoids, long-term drinking, hyperthyroidism, diabetes, myeloma, chronic kidney disease, long-term bed rest, etc. Looseness can occur in people of all ages, not just the elderly.
Idiopathic osteoporosis includes juvenile osteoporosis, young adult osteoporosis, adult osteoporosis, pregnancy and lactation osteoporosis, and this type is more common in young people.
02
Osteoporosis is a phenomenon of aging that does not require treatment
The main symptoms and signs of osteoporosis are pain all over the body, shortening of height, hunchback, fragility fractures, and restricted breathing, among which pain in the body is the most common and the most important symptom. The reason is mainly due to high bone turnover, increased bone resorption, the destruction and disappearance of trabecular bone during the resorption process, and the destruction of subperiosteal cortical bone, all of which can cause systemic bone pain, with low back pain being the most common, and the other causing pain. The main reason is fractures.
The bones with osteoporosis are very fragile, and some slight movements are often not perceived, but they can cause fractures. These minor fractures can have serious consequences for the patient, greatly affecting the quality of life of the patient, and even shortening. life.
These symptoms and signs tell us that osteoporosis needs treatment, early detection, timely medication and lifestyle changes to prevent the occurrence of body pain, fractures and other consequences.
03
Normal blood calcium, no need for calcium supplementation even if there is osteoporosis
Clinically, many patients will pay attention to their own blood calcium levels, and they do not need calcium supplementation when they think that their blood calcium is normal. In fact, normal blood calcium does not mean normal calcium in the bones.
When the body is deficient in calcium due to insufficient intake or excessive loss of calcium, the calcium from the huge calcium reserve in the iliac bone is released into the blood through hormone-regulated osteoclasts to reabsorb bone to maintain blood calcium. Within the normal range, calcium is lost from the bone at this time. When dietary calcium intake is increased, calcium stores are rebuilt by osteoblasts re-forming bone, and this balance is disrupted, leading to osteoporosis.
It should be emphasized that even if a severe fracture occurs in primary osteoporosis, the blood calcium level is still normal, so calcium supplementation cannot simply be determined based on the blood calcium level.
04
Calcium tablets for osteoporosis
In clinical practice, many patients believe that calcium supplementation can prevent osteoporosis. In fact, the loss of bone calcium is only one aspect of osteoporosis. Other factors such as low sex hormones, smoking, excessive drinking, excessive coffee and carbonated drinks, physical activity Deficiencies, calcium and vitamin D deficiencies in the diet (low light or low intake) can all lead to osteoporosis.
Therefore, calcium supplementation alone cannot prevent the occurrence of osteoporosis, and lifestyle improvements should be made to reduce other risk factors.
Second, after calcium is ingested into the human body, it needs the assistance of vitamin D to be transported and absorbed. If patients with osteoporosis simply supplement calcium tablets, the amount that can be absorbed is very small and cannot fully compensate for the calcium lost by the body.
In clinical practice, vitamin D preparations should be added to calcium supplementation in patients with osteoporosis.
Drinking bone broth can prevent osteoporosis
Experiments have shown that after cooking in a pressure cooker for 2 hours, the fat in the bone marrow has surfaced, but the calcium in the soup is still very small. If you want to use bone broth to supplement calcium, you can consider adding half a bowl of vinegar to the soup and simmering slowly for an hour or two, because vinegar can effectively help bone calcium dissolve.
In fact, the best food for calcium supplementation is milk. The average calcium content per 100 g of milk is 104 mg. The appropriate daily calcium intake for adults is 800-1000 mg. Therefore, drinking 500 ml of milk every day can be supplemented. half the amount of calcium. In addition, yogurt, soy products, seafood, etc. also contain more calcium, so you can choose to eat them in a balanced way.
To sum up, in addition to calcium supplementation and vitamin D supplementation, some drugs that inhibit osteoclasts need to be added to patients with severe osteoporosis. In terms of life care, patients should be advised to get more sun exposure, have a balanced diet, and exercise appropriately, and prevent the occurrence of osteoporosis through their own conditioning.
06
Osteoporosis without symptoms
In the opinion of many people, as long as there is no low back pain, and the blood calcium test is not low, there is no osteoporosis. This view is obviously wrong.
First of all, in the early stage of osteoporosis, patients often have no symptoms or very mild symptoms, so it is difficult to be detected. Once they feel low back pain or fracture, they go to diagnosis and treatment, and the disease is often not in the early stage.
Secondly, hypocalcemia cannot be used as a basis for the diagnosis of osteoporosis, because when the loss of urinary calcium leads to a decrease in blood calcium, "hypocalcemia" stimulates the secretion of parathyroid hormone (PTH), which can enhance osteoclasts The activity of cells mobilizes bone calcium into the blood, so that blood calcium can be maintained normal. In fact, people with osteoporosis tend to have low blood calcium levels.
Therefore, the diagnosis of osteoporosis cannot be based on the presence or absence of symptoms and whether the blood calcium is decreased. "Bone density test" is the gold standard for diagnosing osteoporosis. For high-risk groups of osteoporosis (such as premeno pausal women, men over 50 years old, etc.), no matter whether they have symptoms or not, they should go to the hospital regularly for bone mineral density examinations to confirm the diagnosis, instead of waiting until they find themselves with low back pain or fractures. Go for treatment.
Middle-aged and elderly people must first change their health concept from the "disease treatment" model to the "healthy self-healing" model. Use the bone densitometry scan to do bone density testing to prevent bone mass and osteoporosis. For young people, sufficient exercise can obtain higher bone mass reserves and can effectively avoid excessive bone loss in old age. Although exercise in the elderly does not increase bone density, it can slow down the loss of bone mass in stressed areas.
Bone density monitoring is necessary to understand bone health. Because calcium deposits in the bones for a long time, it is recommended to check the bone density once a year. If you have obvious osteoporosis and you are taking drug treatment, to evaluate the efficacy of the drug, you can check it once every six months. It is recommended to keep the bone density report properly, so that it can be compared at the next examination to understand the changes in bone density. It is recommended to use PinYuan ultrasound bone densitometer or dual energy X-ray absorptiometry bone densitometry to check bone density.
Post time: Sep-28-2022