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Shrinking Woman!

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Wedge Fracture of the Spine
Stages of Spine Deformity due to Osteoporosis

Some women who hunch over are not just hunching, they have a spinal fracture that could be devastating to both your posture and your health. It's not just that we lean over and thus seem shorter, women can loose 2 to 8 inches of height as they age. Why? Two main reasons: Disk compression (the disks between your vertebra) and Osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a disease of compromised bone strength predisposing an individual to fractures. When the fractures is a compression of a vertebra then it forms a wedge in the spine you get exaggerated bending forward of the back the hump: dorsal kyphosis and the shortened waist and shrunken gut: lumbar lordosis, and there she shrinks! The disks between the vertebral bodies compress and thus exaggerate the two natural spinal curves, more shrinking. It's important to thus diagnose and fight off osteoprosis to preserve your spine: meanwhile posture actually helps as well, so sit up straight! Excellent! It is also important to have strong bones going into menopause, and that begins with puberty! We gain about 20% of our adult height during our pubertal growth spurt, but actually about one-half of all the calcium in our skeleton is laid down during puberty. And then the other strategy to protect yourself from the consequences of osteoporosis is to figure out how to prevent falling. It's during falls that the osteoportic bones are more likely to break. One solution to prevention of fractures  is to prevent falling! The best way to do that is to exercise, to have your physician modify medication intake all together, check your house for loose rugs or other hazards that might increase the risk of falls, and improve your vision. At Women's Health Practice we prefer to get facts: a special bone density test called vertebral fracture analysis (VFA) can check you specifically for the spinal fractures shown above. 

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Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 25, 2011 at 10:40 PM

    I completely agree! Sit up straight, stand up straight, pay attention to your posture...its the window to your spine. What I find interesting is that compression fractures only occur at particular spinal levels despite the fact that all the bones are the same age. This is due to stress; there is simply more stress than that area is designed to handle and a fracture occurs. Hence the recommendation to pay close attention to your posture...it's important. Why? Because you only get one spine!

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  2. Gyno GabJuly 26, 2011 at 5:02 PM

    Excellent post comments, I agree. And the best way we find at Women's Health Practice http://www.womenshealthpractice.com to diagnose fractures is a DXA scan called VFA. If a patient has back pain or curvatures, I encourage this test.

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