Prevent hunchback, be a "backbone" person - middle-aged and elderly people pay attention to osteoporosis
Osteoporosis has now become a major disease affecting the health of middle-aged and elderly people, and people call this condition a "silent killer". In general, back pain, hunchback, shortened height, frequent cramps, etc., are actually symptoms of loose bones, but many people do not pay enough attention. People with osteoporosis may have no symptoms in the early stages and will only be detected when pain or fractures occur in severe periods. However, when discovered, the best period of treatment is often missed. However, if detected in advance and intervened early, osteoporosis is preventable and controllable, especially if it is prevented in advance, it can be avoided from the problem of this disease.
The essence of hunchback: osteoporosis
Old people often chant: "When you are old, your waist is bent, your back is hunched, and all parts of your body are beginning to hurt..." Bending over and hunching back seems to be a physiological phenomenon that should exist when you are old. In fact, this phenomenon of bending over backwards and hunched over presented by people in old age is essentially osteoporosis.
In a person's life, bones are not static, and bone cells are constantly renewed. Many people think that the bones are fixed after adulthood and will not change again, which is actually wrong. Bones, like hair and skin, are metabolized, old bone tissue is constantly absorbed and degraded, and new bone tissue is constantly rebuilt and formed. With the superposition of factors such as age, bad lifestyle habits or other diseases, the bone mass loss continues to increase, and the load on the body does not decrease. At first, the impact of this situation is not too large, but the bone mass loss is gradually serious, the vertebral body will slowly atrophy, and even spinal compression fractures will occur, and the vertebrae will collapse. From the outside, it looks like people have become shorter, and their backs are a bit hunched. The human body has 24 vertebral bodies, the height of each vertebral body in normal people is about 2 cm, and the vertebral body is compressed when the elderly are osteoporosis, each vertebral body is shortened by about 2 mm, and the average length of the body is shortened by 3 to 6 cm. Among them, the most prone to "aging" is the 11th and 12th thoracic vertebrae and the 3rd lumbar vertebra with large loads.
The dangers of hunchbacks – hunchbacks are not just "old dragon bells"
It would be a mistake to think that a hunchback "shortens the spine" simply means that a person is no longer as tall as before. There will be a series of serious consequences that may occur in succession.
Hunchback, especially the more severe hunchback, can compress the heart and lungs, affect the normal function of the heart and lungs, and cause patients to have shortness of breath and asthma. Once a patient has a lung infection, there will be poor sputum discharge, coupled with lung compression, ventilation function is limited, resulting in lung infection often prolonged, it may be life-threatening.
Organs in the abdominal cavity can also be compressed, causing dyspepsia in patients. In addition, hunchback is also prone to aggravate the patient's existing cervical spondylosis. The reason is that when the hunchback elderly look forward, the cervical spine must be leaned back, which aggravates the pressure on the small joints of the cervical spine, resulting in the aggravation of degenerative changes in the patient's cervical joints.
Early screening and early prevention are key
1. Early detection and screening.
Osteoporosis is one of the chronic diseases that affect the health and quality of life of the elderly, "cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases may affect the length of your life, but osteoporosis determines the width of your life"! Therefore, we must pay attention to early detection and screening. It is recommended that you spend 100 yuan, do a bone density test at the age of 40, understand what state your bone mass is in, and test it once a year after the age of 50
2. Develop good living habits.
Ensure a rich and balanced daily diet and avoid excessive citation of coffee and carbonated beverages. Abundant sunshine: Vitamin D is mainly synthesized by irradiating the skin by ultraviolet rays in the sun. Exercise reasonably. Prevent falls. Patients with medical disorders that affect bone metabolism or those taking glucocorticoids need to visit the hospital regularly to have bone density tested.
3. Adequate calcium and vitamin D.
Among them, vitamin D is divided into ordinary vitamin D and active vitamin D (such as calcitriol), and the elderly or patients with decreased liver and kidney function or vitamin D hydroxylation disorders are more suitable for the use of active vitamin D.
4. Timely consultation.
When there is waist pain that cannot be supported, frequent cramps at night, bilateral knee joint weakness and pain, shortening >3 cm when the height is younger, obvious hunchback deformity, easy to fall, and fractures occur when gently or without force, it is necessary to go to the hospital in time.