Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Osteoporosis
    Osteoporosis
    Osteoporosis
    Ebook179 pages1 hour

    Osteoporosis

    By Melissa Abramovitz

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    While osteoporosis or porous bones may not be a concern for your students as it is an aging disease, there are still things they can do to ensure that the gradual bone loss that will occur in their lives can be staved off. Because it's a common condition, it will touch their lives through people the love. This book helps to explain what it is, what causes it, and preventative measures that can be done at any age to curb the effects of bone lose. Medical advances are also discussed. The bright photographs, charts, diagrams, and sidebars share important information that is perfect for report writers and researchers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRosen Publishing
    Release dateFeb 14, 2011
    ISBN9781420506433
    Osteoporosis
    Author

    Melissa Abramovitz

    Melissa Abramovitz lives in Roseville, California, and writes nonfiction books for all age groups. She is the author of hundreds of magazine articles, more than 40 educational books for children and teenagers, numerous poems and short stories, and several children’s picture books. She has a degree in psychology from the University of California San Diego and is a graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature. Visit her online at www.melissaabramovitz.com.

    Read more from Melissa Abramovitz

    Related to Osteoporosis

    Related ebooks

    YA Health & Daily Living For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Beating Bone Disease

      Mar 25, 2020

      Beating Bone Disease
      1 min read

    • Article

      Your Healthy

      Apr 12, 2022

      Your Healthy
      2 min read

    • Article

      Ahead Of The Curvature

      Feb 19, 2024

      Ahead Of The Curvature
      11 min read

    • Article

      Love Your Bones

      Oct 14, 2021

      Love Your Bones
      2 min read

    • Article

      Boning UP

      Dec 18, 2020

      AS a daily gym-goer and self-styled Dairy Queen, addicted to all things milky and cheesy, Iblithely thought I was nowhere near the osteoporosis arena. But at 46, while hefting my three-year-old on my hip through the reeds on the shore of Lake St Luci

      6 min read

    • Article

      How To Get Stronger Bones

      Apr 21, 2021

      How To Get Stronger Bones
      4 min read

    • Article

      Give A Doc A Bone

      Jun 18, 2023

      Give A Doc A Bone
      2 min read

    • Article

      41 Great Ways To Age Well

      Aug 1, 2019

      41 Great Ways To Age Well
      5 min read

    • Article

      Get Active To Reduce Your Dementia Risk

      Jul 23, 2023

      No matter what your age is, start exercising, even a little—it is one of the best safeguards against dementia. People who have remained active throughout their adult life are the least likely to develop dementia in later years, but even those who tak

      10 min read

    • Article

      As Calls Mount To Ban Embryo Editing With CRISPR, Families Hit By Inherited Diseases Say, Not So Fast

      Apr 17, 2019

      Prominent #CRISPR experts are calling for a global moratorium on embryo editing, but families plagued by severe inherited diseases argue they should have this option if it's safe.

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Well-Oiled Machine

      Feb 15, 2022

      A Well-Oiled Machine
      7 min read

    • Article

      Wellbeing NEWS

      Nov 4, 2020

      Do you love a slice or two of gut-friendly sourdough? Many with time to make their own during lockdown now buy ready-made, but not all loaves are the real deal. To help tell sourdough from sourfaux, the Real Bread Campaign has launched a ‘loaf mark’

      2 min read

    • Article

      Stopping The Clock

      Feb 7, 2021

      The quest for eternal youth is the stuff of sci-fiand legend. For thousands of years, people have been seeking ways to stave off death. China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, was famously obsessed with finding an elixir to prolong his life but died in

      11 min read

    • Article

      It’s What’s Inside That Counts

      Jul 17, 2019

      It’s What’s Inside That Counts
      2 min read

    • Article

      Boost Your Bone Health

      Jun 23, 2022

      Boost Your Bone Health
      1 min read

    • Article

      It’s What’s Inside Counts That

      Jul 21, 2019

      It’s What’s Inside Counts That
      2 min read

    • Article

      Bone Up On OSTEOPOROSIS

      Jul 30, 2023

      It was French pathologist and surgeon Jean Lobstein who coined the term osteoporosis in 1835, but it wasn’t until 1941 that endocrinologist Fuller Albright connected the dots between menopausal women and bone density. And so we began to understand ou

      3 min read

    • Article

      Get A Grip

      Dec 4, 2022

      Get A Grip
      3 min read

    • Article

      READER’S DIGEST RECOMMENDED READ: Dangerous Diagnoses

      Apr 20, 2021

      OFTEN, WHEN WE describe a medical condition as “psychosomatic”, what we actually mean is “not real”. But this is a mistake that nobody who reads Suzanne O’Sullivan’s endlessly thought-provoking book is likely to make again. As she demonstrates throug

      3 min read

    • Article

      Watch Your Mouth!

      Feb 3, 2020

      Watch Your Mouth!
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Bone To Pick

      May 24, 2020

      A Bone To Pick
      7 min read

    • Article

      Living Well

      Jun 30, 2021

      Living Well
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Last Taboo

      Mar 5, 2022

      The Last Taboo
      5 min read

    • Article

      Living Well

      May 25, 2022

      Living Well
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Osteoporosis

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Osteoporosis - Melissa Abramovitz

      © 2011 Gale, Cengage Learning

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      Every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyrighted material.

      LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

      Abramovitz, Melissa, 1954-Osteoporosis / by Melissa Abramovitz.

      p. cm. -- (Diseases & disorders)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-1-4205-0339-5 (hardcover: alk. paper)

      1. Osteoporosis. I. Title.

      RC931.O73A27 2011 616.7'16--dc22

      2010035232

      Lucent Books

      27500 Drake Rd.

       Farmington Hills, MI 48331

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4205-0339-5

      ISBN-10: 1-4205-0339-1

      Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 14 13 12 11 10

      Table of Contents

      Foreword

      Introduction

      Osteoporosis: A Concern for Young and Old

      Chapter 1

      What Is Osteoporosis?

      Chapter 2

      Risk Factors and Causes

      Chapter 3

      Prevention and Treatment

      Chapter 4

      Living with Osteoporosis

      Chapter 5

      The Future

      Notes

      Glossary

      Organizations to Contact

      For More Information

      Index

      Picture Credits

      About the Author

      FOREWORD

      The Most Difficult Puzzles Ever Devised

      Charles Best, one of the pioneers in the search for a cure for diabetes, once explained what it is about medical research that intrigued him so. It’s not just the gratification of knowing one is helping people, he confided, although that probably is a more heroic and selfless motivation. Those feelings may enter in, but truly, what I find best is the feeling of going toe to toe with nature, of trying to solve the most difficult puzzles ever devised. The answers are there somewhere, those keys that will solve the puzzle and make the patient well. But how will those keys be found?

      Since the dawn of civilization, nothing has so puzzled people— and often frightened them, as well—as the onset of illness in a body or mind that had seemed healthy before. A seizure, the inability of a heart to pump, the sudden deterioration of muscle tone in a small child—being unable to reverse such conditions or even to understand why they occur was unspeakably frustrating to healers. Even before there were names for such conditions, even before they were understood at all, each was a reminder of how complex the human body was, and how vulnerable.

      While our grappling with understanding diseases has been frustrating at times, it has also provided some of humankind’s most heroic accomplishments. Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery in 1928 of a mold that could be turned into penicillin has resulted in the saving of untold millions of lives. The isolation of the enzyme insulin has reversed what was once a death sentence for anyone with diabetes. There have been great strides in combating conditions for which there is not yet a cure, too. Medicines can help AIDS patients live longer, diagnostic tools such as mammography and ultrasounds can help doctors find tumors while they are treatable, and laser surgery techniques have made the most intricate, minute operations routine.

      This toe-to-toe competition with diseases and disorders is even more remarkable when seen in a historical continuum. An astonishing amount of progress has been made in a very short time. Just two hundred years ago, the existence of germs as a cause of some diseases was unknown. In fact, it was less than 150 years ago that a British surgeon named Joseph Lister had difficulty persuading his fellow doctors that washing their hands before delivering a baby might increase the chances of a healthy delivery (especially if they had just attended to a diseased patient)!

      Each book in Lucent’s Diseases and Disorders series explores a disease or disorder and the knowledge that has been accumulated (or discarded) by doctors through the years. Each book also examines the tools used for pinpointing a diagnosis, as well as the various means that are used to treat or cure a disease. Finally, new ideas are presented—techniques or medicines that may be on the horizon.

      Frustration and disappointment are still part of medicine, for not every disease or condition can be cured or prevented. But the limitations of knowledge are being pushed outward constantly; the most difficult puzzles ever devised are finding challengers every day.

      INTRODUCTION

      Osteoporosis: A Concern for Young and Old

      The thin, fragile bones that characterize osteoporosis mostly affect older women, but men and young people get this disease as well. Of the 10 million Americans who currently have osteoporosis, about 8 million are women and 2 million are men. Worldwide, the International Osteoporosis Foundation says that one in three women and one in five men have osteoporosis, for a total of more than 200 million people. And although osteoporosis is very rare in children and young teens, it does occur in a substantial number of older teens and young adults. A University of Arkansas study found, for example, that 2 percent of college-aged women in the United States have osteoporosis, and 15 percent more have the low bone mass that places them at risk for the disease.

      Furthermore, the biological processes that result in osteoporosis begin in childhood and adolescence, and certain habits and behaviors in young people can determine whether or not they eventually get osteoporosis. According to the authors of Strong Women, Strong Bones, The bones we have later in life reflect what we did as kids, teens, and young adults. So in a very real sense, osteoporosis is a disease that starts in childhood.¹ Thus, although many people believe that osteoporosis is just of concern for older women, medical experts emphasize that people of both sexes and all ages should be aware of this painful and often devastating disease.

      A Widespread but Largely Preventable Problem

      Osteoporosis can lead to severe pain, disability, emotional suffering, and even death for those who have it. Many affected individuals have chronic back pain and a hunched posture from fractures in the spine caused by osteoporosis. Others break a hip and are unable to ever live independently again, and many die from complications of these fractures. The National Osteoporosis Foundation estimates that about 24 percent of the approximately three hundred thousand people who fracture a hip each year die within one year. And many people experience serious depression and withdrawal from society because they are so afraid of breaking bones that they sit at home and feel hopeless.

      Fortunately, there are things people can do to prevent osteoporosis. Young women and adolescents are in the best position to lower their osteoporosis risk. By getting adequate calcium, vitamin D, and exercise and avoiding tobacco, caffeine, and alcohol, they can build a strong, dense skeleton that can better withstand bone loss in their later years,² say the authors of A Woman Doctor’s Guide to Osteoporosis. The same recommendations apply to young men as well, and experts say older people can also reduce their risk by following these guidelines.

      Unfortunately, people rarely think about the dangers of osteoporosis and tend to not pay attention to physicians’ and government agencies’ recommendations about a nutritious diet and regular, moderate exercise. A 2004 report on bone health issued by the United States surgeon general revealed, for example, that nine out of ten teenaged girls in the United States fail to get enough calcium.

      Many young people also

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1