Feel it in your bones: taking the pain out of osteoporosis

Stronger bones: exercise, vitamins and nutrition are among the best ways to build up bones and prevent fractures. Illustration: Matt Chase/The Observer

Imagine a room full of women. Imagine half of them breaking a bone. What will it be? Hip? Spine? Wrist? Neck? Imagine the plaster casts, the metal screws, the pain, the immobility, the grief – a third of those who break a hip will die within a year, according to the NHS. The Royal Osteoporosis Society says one in two women over 50 in the UK will get a fracture due to osteoporosis. And that just doesn’t need to happen.

Thanks to many factors, including neglect and gender bias in medicine, midlife women are not told about the simple preventive measures they can take to maintain healthy bones. “Your bones are silent until they break. And then they scream,” says Dr Vonda Wright, a campaigning American orthopaedic surgeon and the author of Fitness After 40: How to Stay Strong at Any Age.