Depression in the Elderly - Osteoporosis, pt 1
I have elderly family members who deal with depression due in part to physical ailments. Today I’d like to address a big depression cause in elderly that not many people think about osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis is a disease of low bone mass characterized by weakened and porous bones that have an increased risk of fracture.
* peak bone mass is reached at about 30-years-old
* women lose about 30-50% of their bone mass while men lose 20-30%
* 1/6 of women will fracture a hip in their lifetime
* Most common fracture sites are wrist, hip & vertebrae
* 20% of individuals (mostly male) will die within a year from fracture related complications - a lot of this is due to becoming depressed once you’re unable to function at your previous ability. These 20% are oftentimes elderly suicide deaths.
* 60% of falls occur in the home
There are 15 factors that may effect your bone mass:
1. gender - women have a higher risk as men have stronger bones and more base bone mass overall
2. age - over the age of 65 your risk increases, bone loss is gradual but for women, it speeds up during menopause, the full effects are felt later in life, even though they begin early-on
3. early menopause (or long periods of ammenorrhea) - menopause depletes your stores of estrogen, without estrogen, osteoclasts (holes dug in your bones) are more active than the osteoblasts (refilling of those bone holes), testosterone decrease also effects men’s bone mass
4. frame size - thin, small-framed body generally means you have a lower peak bone mass
5. ethnicity - African Americans normally have a heavier skeleton therefore a higher peak bone mass, Caucasian & Asians have a lower bone density
6. family history - especially if it’s a mom/dad/sibling with history of fractures
December 5th, 2007 at 6:03 am
[...] in the Elderly - Osteoporosis, pt 2 by Sarah Gould Continuing yesterday’s post about 15 factors that can influence your osteoporosis risk, I’d like to leave you with the rest of the list. Later I will address depression in the [...]
December 7th, 2007 at 7:04 am
[...] your experience and lets see if we can come up with some predictors of the menopause [...]