GynoFiles

Osteoporosis is the result of many factors, when combined with genetic factors is the end result on your bones potentially making you have chronic pain and fractures. Smoking, hot flashes, and even weight loss can cause bone loss. Many women at risk do not even know they are at risk for bone loss . It may be worse for your bones to have hot flashes than even to smoke! The more a woman had hot flashes the worse (lower) her bone mass was according to a journal of Clinical Endocrinology article written by Dr. Carolyn Crandall of UCLA. 85% of all women report night sweats, and they are due to reduced levels of estrogen.The reasons we should not ignore hot flashes based on bone health has been shown in other studies. Women who have night sweats and hot flashes are also at risk for low bone mass according to the research on 5600 women in the Eindhoven Perimenopausal Osteoporosis study as well as the SWAN study on over 2200 women. What we don't know yet is whether we have to also cure ...

Often we can be diagnosed, whatever the condition, without the use of xrays. But in pregnancy we want to avoid unnecessary testing. Radiation exposure over the years increases cancer risks in us, and in the sensitive developing fetus that is more true. The numbers of x rays that would be safe to have in pregnancy is not firmly established. We generally say for dental x rays for instance, shield the baby and you can have the test.  So how safe are x rays? As I said, we don't know exactly, but here's a great table to compare one x ray test to another from one medical organization.

We have healthy bones because there is a balance between the bone we form and the bone we resorb thoughout one's life. After the rapid bone gain as infants we gain steadily as children, and then have a spurt in bone mass through our growth spurt a puberty when we put down more bone than we resorb to utilize calcium, and we lose the ability to put calcium back into the bones to keep them as thick as they were in youth. The process of bone development is a process whereby the growth plates are left open so that bones can gain in strength, volume, and length. thus x-rays looking at girls in puberty, their bone age and their hormones can help determine where they are in the process and roughly how tall they will be. Other hormones besides estrogen affect this process. The hormones made as a girl crosses into puberty from the adrenal gland is actually the process of adrenarche, and the maturation of our growth hormone production is called somatarche (which is also the maturing of the...

Several reports have recently dealt with the long and short term effects of birth control pills on one's bones. Years ago OCs had much higher doses of pill s. Now most pills are low dose, and the cumulative effect, while lowering some risks, may have health consequences for others.The findings were published in the January issue of Contraception . "low-dose oral contraceptives with long-term use have some impact on bone density," said study author Delia Scholes, a senior investigator at the Group Health Research Institute of Group Health Cooperative in Seattle.Whether this is an issue for just teens or women under 30 or all women needs to still be explored, as I discussed in a prior post. In this study the group over 18 and under 30 lost about 5% of their spinal bone if they were on oral contraception for over 2 years. If that was a menopausal group the researchers pointed out that can translate into a 50% greater rate of fractures. In the young women, fractures ...

We all want strong bones. We have to take calcium. We have to exercise. But is there more too it once menopause starts? The ovarian production of estrogen provides a strong drive for that calcium to stay into bones in a greater density, and inevitably women will have a dramatically increased bone loss at menopause. Thin bones are not as healthy as thicker bones, in most cases. But will that translate into an actual fracture? And if not, it doesn't need medical treatment. This is what the WHO and researchers have tried to convince us with their Frax score . And it's a tool I've been using to discuss bone health with patients for over a year now, and it's really a sophisticated form of the prediction models that WHO encouraged us to use for several years. But remember, even if you score really well on this exam, there are factors the quiz doesn't include. Not only that but in some research studies of alendronate if they tried to look at who benefited from medicat...