"The remarkable drop in estrogen during menopause makes women more prone to this disease"
"Osteoporosis: diagnosis and prevention of morbidity and mortality" is the title of the talk that yesterday offered the doctor Salamanca Arias Patience in the auditorium of the University College, within the forum of the newspaper. A conference where the keys were given to prevent this disease that affects women in most cases.
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-What people are more likely to suffer from osteoporosis?
-The most prone patients are established universally that are women over 40 years, those who have already reached menopause.
- Does this disease affect men less?
-It is also a disease of men, but just as in women it appears in that period of life, in men it happens later. The deterioration is slower because one of the important factors is the loss of estrogen. Women are markedly diminished during menopause, but loss in men, who also have estrogen, does not occur so quickly. That is why osteoporosis appears after 65 years of age.
-What are the alarm symptoms?
-There are no symptoms, but risk factors that must be taken into account. One of the most important is the genetic, for example if the parents of the person we are evaluating have had a hip fracture. You also have to know if this person has had some toxic habits, especially tobacco. Another factor is that you have had a fracture before, a disease that favors the loss of bone mass or a treatment that is favoring the fragility of the bone.
- Is there any form of prevention?
There is an English research group that has determined a program called FRAX, where twelve risk factors are introduced. Through a mathematical calculation two data are obtained to know if you will have hip fracture or osteoporotic fracture of another bone. What is usually done to avoid these risks is to make an assessment according to this calculation and the risk factors, along with bone densitometry, to obtain a high, medium and low risk. And this is the way to know who to treat: always when it is maximum risk or has had a fracture, if it is medium risk too and when it is low risk only will have to take preventive measures.
- What are those measures?
-That they exercise, that they take an adequate amount of calcium and the sun a little a day. They are very easy measures to comply with and, if done well, during the adolescence stage and the first part of adulthood they get a high peak of bone mass that will later have less chance of having loss and osteoporosis. To keep it, you have to keep doing the same so that the loss is less. We must also know that certain minerals and vitamins such as D not only get this type of action on the bone, but also has other effects on biological processes that until now were not very clear and that get some protection against cancer and autoimmune diseases or infectious. This type of actions are very important for health, not only bone, but general.
- What do you think of the products that provide extra calcium, like some milks?
- They provide more calcium, although perhaps not as much as explained in the packaging. But neither is it necessary to resort to these products because there are many foods that have calcium other than dairy, such as almonds and hazelnuts, chickpeas, sardines in oil, some cheeses? The amount of calcium is easy to get, what is not so much is the adequate level of vitamin D. Although in Spain we think we have a wonderful sun, more than 50% of the population have it low, even in the south of the country . This vitamin is very important, because it helps calcium to be absorbed and deposited in the bone so that it can then be distributed to all other organs when necessary.
- Is it true that playing certain sports, such as football or handball, during puberty, prevents the disease, as a recent study has confirmed?
-It is a protective factor, along with taking a calcium intake of about a gram a day and sunbathing for twenty or thirty minutes. These are the three actions that help the bone stay healthy.