Question: what is osteoporosis

James Betts answered on 31 Jan 2017:

Osteoporosis is when bones become fragile and may be at risk of damage.

All our tissues are constantly being broken down and replaced, so you gradually get a new body over time.

As we get older we may not be replacing bone as quickly as we are breaking it down, so there can be a slow loss of the minerals and therefore the strength in our skeleton.

This can happen faster for certain people and can be affected by our diet.

The best way to measure osteoporosis is using a scanner we have ini my laboratory called DEXA (dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry). A the name suggests, this uses two x-ray to measure the density of minerals in a person’s bones.