Osteoporosis. What is it? Who is at risk? These are some common questions people ask if you bring up the this topic. It is a strong example of a nutrition education topic that more people should be aware of.
Osteoporosis is a disease that makes your bones become extremely brittle and weak, so they eventually break easier over time. People who are at risk to develop this disease are mostly older women, but men and women of any age with low bone mass can get it. Family history can also have something to do with it. The older, and thinner you are, the more prone you are to this disease.
Some key ways to prevent yourself from developing osteoporosis are: eat and drink plenty of calcium and vitamin D. One simple way to do this is drink your milk! In addition you could eat yogurt, and cheese too! To get some more calcium to your diet orange juice, cereals, and breads work too. Especially if milk and dairy isn’t your favorite. It’s a super easy way to reduce your risk of osteoporosis! Another way is to exercise daily. Hiking, jogging, dancing, lifting weights or even just simply taking a walk is making your bones stronger and helping them develop more mass!
The most surprising thing about this disease, besides that fact that over 40 million people in the United States have it, is the effect drinking and smoking have on your bones. We usually just associate smoking with lungs, and drinking with your liver, but no one really considers how much those habits affect our bones as well. By excessively participating in these activities our bones are slowly deteriorating, and putting us at greater risk for osteoporosis.
The most interesting factor is that if you are diagnosed with this disease, just one simple fall can cause you to break several bones in your body. Therefore, your whole life will change in an instant. Just going for a walk could put you in danger. I think this is interesting because something as simple as walking can be taken away from you in an instant, yet it is very easy to reduce your risk of this disease so why aren’t more people doing that?
As a nutrition educator, I would use this material to get the word out there, especially to women, about osteoporosis and how serious it is. It would be easy to hand out flyers listing important key factors about the disease and how to prevent it. Or to even hold sessions and educate people in the community about osteoporosis. Since the ways to reduce your risk are as simple as adding milk to your diet, I feel like people will be more willing to educate themselves about this nutrition-related disease, and further their knowledge. I also will refer them to the website which is posted below, where I found most of my information I talked about in this blog post.
Drink your milk and get your vitamin D! It’ll help you in the long run!
http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Bone/Osteoporosis/osteoporosis_ff.asp