People don't generally associate Osteoporosis with men, as a matter of fact I don't think that I have ever even heard it mentioned as it relates to men, but new screening procedure that works for women has been approved to be used by men as well.

The National Osteoporosis Foundation has said recently that millions of men are at risk for the bone thinning disease and according to orthopedic surgeon Dr. John Skedros, men are more likely to die from a osteoporotic hip fracture. Now, the only reason I even happened upon any of this is because as I approach my 48th birthday, despite the fact I keep myself in what I feel is pretty good shape, the aches and pains occur much more frequently, and I just don't "bounce back" from any sort of physical activity the way I used to. It truly is tough getting old, and the concessions to age are tough to come to grips with.

That is why coming across this bit of information caught my eye. Even though I am not "at risk" according to the factors listed (I'll share these a bit later) I found it interesting that if so many men are at risk, why don't you hear more about the risk to men? I'm not sure, and that probably isn't even really very important, I think it is much more important to share the fact that there is a simple screening questionnaire available online at teambone.com/osteo/osteo.html that will help you decide if you need to take additional steps to actually diagnose and or treat this disease that is treatable.

If didn't already know, osteoporosis deals with decreased bone bulk, which leads to increased chance for "breakability" and studies show that if trends continue broken hips could become almost an epidemic for today's baby-boomers. Bone breaks can occur by a fall from a even just a standing height, and hip fractures can occur without major trauma according to Dr. Skedros. So, just what are the bone risk factors for men and women to consider, well if you have a small frame, eat a diet that is low in calcium, smoke, drink to excess, are inactive physically, have taken high doses of thyroid or asthma medication (glucocorticoids) for more than three months or are Caucasian or Asian you may want to look into this a little bit further.

If you are at risk, then a qualified health care provider will be able to help you to schedule a bone density screening and Medicare does cover much of the costs associated with the testing for qualified individuals. So even though this doesn't apply to me, yet, I thought it might prove useful to pass along the survey information for men to at least assess their risk of osteoporosis and then more importantly take the necessary steps to treat it.