Young women fall short with calcium
DALLAS — Dr. Laura Scalfano knows the refrain all too well. As a pediatrician, she hears it the loudest from teenagers and young women who don't believe it will ever happen to them.
"It's not that they don't care," says Scalfano, director of adolescent medicine for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. "It's that they really believe 'It won't happen to me.' It's the same reason they don't wear seat belts and don't use condoms and aren't abstinent."
A recent study by the University of Maryland shows that teenage girls and young women, especially blacks, are not getting the calcium they need at the moment in life when calcium and vitamin D are of utmost necessity in building bone density.
An equally strong study, from the Ohio State University Medical Center arrives at an equally stern warning: Calcium supplementation is by far the best way of increasing bone mass during critical childhood growth spurts. But, they say, it's woefully lacking.
Both studies affirm, in no uncertain terms, that elevated calcium intake by pre-adolescent girls is by far the best way of preventing bone loss, fractures and osteoporosis in later life.
At 19, Terah Shaffer is a trim, fit high school track star from McKinney, Texas, who already is having problems with bones.
She admits she's "no fan of milk" and that she once drank "a lot of soda, constantly, though not as much anymore." She now takes calcium and vitamin D supplements in an effort to strengthen her bones as much as possible.
She knows her gene pool places her at high risk for osteoarthritis and other bone-related maladies. Her mom, Becky Shaffer, 46, grew up drinking milk and still drinks a lot of it.
But Shaffer has suffered battles with bone spurs, especially in her neck. Last year, she underwent surgery to have them removed and to lessen the pain from ongoing osteoarthritis.
That's a condition her mother, Shirley Tyree, 67, has struggled with for years. Tyree underwent back surgery in 1974 but recently had additional surgery in an effort to ward off a recurrence of pain, especially in her back.
"This definitely runs in families, in your gene pool," says orthopedic surgeon Dr. Stephen Courtney, who treats the women at Plano (Texas) Orthopedics. "Some people are more prone to bone disease, just as some people are more prone to heart disease."
He's beginning to see a stream of older patients, which he attributes to baby boomers heading into their senior years. He contends that it's equally or even more important to watch your weight and take calcium and vitamin D supplements in your 30s and 40s than it is when you're younger.
It's familiar territory for Georgia Kostas, 51, an award-winning dietitian who lives in Dallas. Kostas is a fit, healthy woman who has always taken care of herself. But after her mother lost a significant chunk of bone mass after being put on steroids for a medical condition, Kostas and her three sisters had themselves tested. And what they found was alarming. A "pre-osteoporosis" condition was diagnosed in all of them.
It was even more surprising to Kostas, who had spent much of her adult life doing aerobic dance, walking and playing tennis.
"But even doing those things," she says, "I had done nothing, it seemed, to build bone mass. It was all rather frightening."
Her story alone, she says, underscores the importance of teenage girls taking the needed measures before reaching 40 or 50, only to find out it's too late.
She couldn't be more right, say researchers Richard Forshee and Maureen Storey.
"We found that adolescents and young women were consuming a lot less than the recommended amounts of calcium," says Forshee. "For example, young females were consuming little more than 800 milligrams a day as compared to the recommended 1,300 milligrams of calcium a day.
"This is particularly important because it's during this period when most of the bone mass of your lifetime is acquired. In order to reach your peak bone mass, you need adequate amounts of calcium and vitamin D, as well as weight-bearing physical activity."
