Osteoporosis in Young Women

Young women are the most burdened of the lot, they work, run around, have kids, and they deal with high levels of stress. In such a situation, it is very important to strike a balance between other things and health, otherwise life might get really difficult. Various health complaints have been seen rising amongst the young women due to bad eating habits and neglecting of health. It is said that osteoporosis is a disease for old women, but that is not entirely true, it can be found in young women and in children too.

Osteoporosis is a condition in which the bones become brittle and fragile from loss of tissue, it may be a result of hormonal changes, or deficiency of calcium or vitamin D. There can be multiple reasons of young women getting diagnosed with osteoporosis. Let’s look into those causes in detail–

Low estrogen – Osteoporosis depends on the bone density, bones find it much easier to break down in the absence of estrogen, hence, low estrogen is one of the major reasons of osteoporosis in women, when older women get menopause, the level of estrogen drops and their chances of getting osteoporosis increase. Younger women who are very thin or have anorexia have chances of getting osteoporosis because they stop menstruating.

Lack of Calcium – Bones are basically made of calcium and phosphorus. Many organs like the heart, muscles and nerves require calcium for proper functioning and when they don’t get enough from the food that you eat, they start taking it away from your bones making them weaker, this results in osteoporosis.

Lack of Vitamin D – Vitamin D helps the body in absorbing and using Calcium and thus the absence of vitamin D leads to weak bones of loss of bone mass.

Hormonal Imbalance – Various hormones help in regulating the bone density in the body, including the growth hormone and the parathyroid hormone. They decide how much of calcium will be used in your body and when will the bone be built and broken down. Thus the hormonal imbalance can lead to osteoporosis.

Sedentary lifestyle – Sedentary means inactive, people who have a sedentary or inactive lifestyle tend to develop osteoporosis because bones become weaker if they are not utilized properly often. This can obviously be altered by changing the lifestyle that one follows and this also the cause why people with paralysis have weaker bones.

Smoking – Smokers have lower bone density in comparison to the non-smokers. It has been proved that nicotine hampers the usage of calcium, vitamin and estrogen in the body, making the bones weaker and more prone to fracturing.

How can one prevent osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is easily preventable if the action is taken at the right time. The earlier you become careful, the better it is for you.

1. Take a proper diet – a proper diet is absolutely necessary if one wants to fight osteoporosis. One can also take supplements of calcium and Vitamin D as and when necessary to prevent the body having a deficiency of the same.
2. Exercising regularly – Exercising regularly ensures that all the bones and muscles in your body are utilized and all the organs continue to work perfectly well thus absorbing the right amount of nutrients.
3. Quit smoking – Smoking has already destroyed you enough, there are too many side effects of smoking, so, I don’t even need to start explaining how totally wrong it is. Quitting smoking will help you in restoring your health which may take some time. So, the sooner you do the better it will be.

Women need to understand that something like osteoporosis exists only when we fail to take care of our body which should ideally be our priority in life. Ageing is inevitable, but osteoporosis is not. Nobody wants to go through pain and weakness, it feels totally crappy and believe me, you don’t want to see yourself there.