I had a bone density test last Fall and was told I had osteopina and I should get started on Fosamax right away. I was a tad bit shocked by that to say the least. I'm not a skinny gal....never have been. Plus, there were no women with bad bones in my family. As a kid,I had lots of milk, cheese and homeade ice cream. Heck, my uncle had a dairy farm! The nurse gave me some samples of Fosamax in the office. I said, "Uh, what, are ya afraid I'm gonna break a hip on my out out of here or something?" So I told her I would think about the medicine, but I don't take any medicine with out doing some research on it. I didn't like what I found out. You need to read the fine print on the inserts that comes with Fosamax. You might have use a magnify glass to read it, but do read it! For starters,most folks dropped out of the studies because of side effects. After lots of research & talking with women who had bone density tests, I decided that Fosamax isn't for me.

Here is short excerpt below from an article from one of the websites that I found when I was doing some reserach on it last year, explaining how the word osteopina came into being.

Osteoporosis and Fosamax
by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

Drug companies, including the makers of Fosamax, are making a fortune based on women’s misconceptions of osteoporosis and bone loss. In this article, you’ll learn the truth about bone health after menopause.

What is osteopenia?
As recently as the 1970’s, the diagnosis of osteopenia didn’t exist (my colleague, Dixie Mills, checked her textbooks from medical school just to be sure). Experts chose this term in the 1980’s to fit the women who didn't quite have osteoporosis to motivate them to pay attention to bone health.

However, there was no medical basis for choosing this number and no studies to support everyone’s immediate assumption that a diagnosis of osteopenia meant you were headed for osteoporosis. No one seemed to notice — except of course the drug companies — that by this definition almost half of all post-menopausal women now had the new medical condition called osteopenia.

Because osteoporosis is progressive, the diagnosis of osteopenia can be very frightening —many women stop lifting heavy objects or engaging in physical exercise for fear of fractures. But in reality almost all women with osteopenia should be getting more exercise, not less!

~Cookie~