Boning UP
AS a daily gym-goer and self-styled Dairy Queen, addicted to all things milky and cheesy, Iblithely thought I was nowhere near the osteoporosis arena. But at 46, while hefting my three-year-old on my hip through the reeds on the shore of Lake St Lucia, I stepped in what I’ve insisted ever since was a hippo footprint, and heard a click like knitting needles. My fibula, the calf bone, had snapped.
The shock of almost dropping my son in crocinfested waters and of contemplating a major work assignment in Australia and Fiji the following month with a broken leg was matched only by the shock of my GP insisting on a bone density scan – and flagging me as a possible candidate for osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis, which means ‘porous bones’, is the result of our bone tissue being reduced so the structure of the bone is disrupted, putting us at risk of fracture, usually of the wrist,
