Osteoporosis Cures and Bone Health
MONITORING OSTEOPOROSIS THERAPY – (05-29-06)
Monitoring Osteoporosis Therapy: Bone Mineral Density, Bone Turnover Markers, or Both?
I’m gearing up towards a series of community education presentations on osteoporosis, and I know that I’m going to catch some flak on this one. This is a topic that covers many of the fallacies we live with. Our culture is so ingrained on the idea that “milk does a body good” that some get hostile when told this is very weakly supported in the medical research.
Another issue is the use of urine tests to tell how quickly we’re losing bone. Despite it’s availability for probably more than 10 years now, it is rarely used and most physicians are unaware of this type of testing. This is, of course, despite the fact that most drugs for osteoporosis are evaluated with urinary markers. On a final note, I will guess that in 20 years we will be doing little bone density and mostly moved to qualitative ultrasound to evaluate bone quality, not just density.
