Is osteoporosis on your radar?

1 in 2 is the number of women over the age of 50 who will break a bone because of poor bone health. i.e if you’re a woman and you are reading this, there’s a 50% of chance of this happening to you.  The figures for men aren’t much different at one in five.

I mention this because bone health isn’t something many of us think about all that much.  We’re often too busy concentrating on how to ward off those diseases that feel like they must be the biggest risks to our health and quality of life. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, those kinds of worries.

The good news

• Around 80% of your risk of having a fracture due to osteoporosis is genetic and you can’t do much about it. But the other 20% is yours to play with through diet, weight bearing exercise, and watching what you smoke and drink.

• Osteoporosis is very treatable and because of this the fractures it causes are very preventable, provided that the problem is discovered in time.

• Screening for osteoporosis is on the up and there are some really user-friendly new treatments in the pipeline for those who need them.

• Contrary to what some of the newspapers say, osteoporosis doesn’t kill you.

There are a lot of misconceptions about diet and osteoporosis, particularly the one about having to eat three servings of dairy every day to protect your bones. I’ve got a couple of lovely calcium-rich recipes coming up, no cow required.

Thanks to the National osteoporosis society for their figures.