Although prevention is the best “treatment” for osteoporosis, there are some possible signs and symptoms that everyone should know. With this awareness, you are more likely to seek medical attention before weakening bones reach a high risk of fracture. Clearly, a bone fracture does not need to be the first indication of osteoporosis.
Signs of Osteoporosis
The signs of osteoporosis can be non-existent or very subtle. The disease generally creeps up on people before they know what hit them. The first sign is often a bone fracture. This is virtually always the case with osteoporosis of the hip. Sometimes the fracture is happens due to a relatively minor fall. In other cases, the hip breaks from normal weight bearing and causes a fall.Also, changes in the spine can provide some telltale signs of developing osteoporosis. These changes show up as decreased height and a change in posture.
The spine is made up of a series of 33 individual bones called vertebrae (vertebra for individual bones). These bones are separated from each other by flexible fibrous disks (intervertebral disks) that allow the healthy spine to move in multiple directions. Over time, gradual bone loss can lead to changes in the size and shape of vertebrae.
These changes result in decreased height and a forward curvature of the upper spine (known as dowager’s hump). With age, it is normal to lose some height due to changes in intervertebral disks rather than vertebrae. However, any loss of height greater than four centimeters (about 1.5 inches) is likely due to some bone loss in the vertebrae. Since height loss is virtually all due to spinal changes, a person’s foot-to-hip height does not change. Only the upper body becomes shorter.
There are a couple of ways to assess height change. The simplest is to compare your height in your 20s and 30s to your current height. Another approach compares standing height to length of the arm span. In most people, arm span is approximately the same as height. If arm span is significantly greater than height, it may indicate a loss of height.
Symptoms
Back pain can be a symptom of a wide variety of problems, including osteoporosis of the spine. With loss of bone mineral density, the vertebral bones in the spine can gradually decrease in height and become deformed. But the most serious concern is a compression fracture in which a vertebral body collapses. This can affect nerves and lead to pain and serious disability.Less commonly, decreased height of the main bodies of the vertebrae (vertebral bodies) can cause the bony protrusions (spinal processes) of the vertebrae to make painful contact with each other. This condition is known as Baastrup-syndrome, or “kissing spine.” This, of course, can result in serious back pain as well.
What You Should Know About Osteoporosis Symptoms
“What are the symptoms of osteoporosis?” is not really the best question to ask. Since the most common first symptom of osteoporosis is a bone fracture, it is much more important to ask, “What are the risk factors for osteoporosis?” and “How can it be prevented?”
Sources
Bartl, Reiner and Bertha Frisch. Osteoporosis Diagnosis, Prevention, Therapy. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2004.Bone Health and Osteoporosis: A Report of the Surgeon General (2004), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Office of the Surgeon General, Washington, D.C.
Chen, Clement K. H., et al. “Intraspinal Posterior Epidural Cysts Associated with Baastrup's Disease: Report of 10 Patients.” American Journal of Roentgenology 182 (2004): 191-194.
Kota, Gopi Krishna, N.K. Shyam Kumar, and Raji Thomas. “Baastrups Disease an Unusual Cause of Backpain : a Case Report. The Internet Journal of Radiology volume 4 number 1 (2005). 10 Oct. 2006 <http://www.ispub.com/ostia/index.php?xmlFilePath=journals/ijra/vol4n1/baastrups.xml>
Pinto, Pedro S., Robert D. Boutin and Donald Resnick. “Spinous process fractures associated with Baastrup disease.” Clinical Imaging 28 (2004): 219-22.