I had no idea I had an increased risk of developing osteoporosis until I tried this free quiz—here’s how to check your bone health

Osteoporosis is often described as a silent disease.

It’s a chronic and often age-related condition where bone mineral density and mass gradually decline, making these structures weak and brittle, but it typically causes no pain or obvious symptoms.

Globally, a third of women and one in five men over 50 will break a bone due to osteoporosis, according to the International Osteoporosis Foundation.

Yet the vast majority of the population have never checked their risk level.

Hoping to address this information gap, the Royal Osteoporosis Society (ROS) has launched a free online assessment that can determine your risk and suggest whether you could benefit from getting in-person advice from a medical professional.

At 39, regularly engaging in weight-bearing physical activity and routinely supplementing with vitamin D, I assumed I’d have a pretty low risk.

But it turns out I’ve been overlooking a few critical risk factors.

Here’s what I learned when completing the ROS’s bone checker tool, which I hope will prompt everyone to investigate their own risk of osteoporosis before anything breaks.

The factors that increased my risk of osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is often associated with the natural ageing process, meaning risk levels will generally increase as you get older.

This, the ROS’s tool explains, is due to the bones losing strength as you age, along with an increased likelihood of taking a fall, which could lead to a fracture.

The assessment also revealed that women can lose bone strength faster than men around the menopause, due to falling levels of the hormone estrogen.

Estrogen helps preserve bone density by balancing the natural cycle of bone tissue being broken down and rebuilt.

White and Asian people also have a higher risk of developing osteoporosis than people of other ethnicities due to various genetic and metabolic factors.

A low body mass index (BMI) under 18.5 is another risk factor.

However, the primary reason my risk level increased more than I would have expected was due to having broken a bone easily following a minor bump.

It happened around five years ago.

An innocuous collision with the fence on a five-a-side soccer field left me in A&E with a spiral fracture of the fifth metacarpal bone in my hand and my arm in a cast for several weeks.

“You will be two or three times more likely to break another bone than someone who has never broken a bone,” states the bone check tool.

Suffering a spinal fracture can elevate risk by as much as five times.

Exploring this risk factor further, the ROS’s Julia Thomson reassures me that “not all broken bones immediately indicate you may have a problem with your bone health”.

But the risk checker will flag a previous broken bone as something that may benefit from further discussion with your doctor about what happened and how.

“It will help you understand whether you may benefit from a full fracture risk assessment or any other action to maintain your bone health,” adds Thomson.

“Or whether, on balance, this seems like an unfortunate injury caused by something else.”

Other factors that can elevate your risk of osteoporosis

The ROS’s tool revealed several other factors that can increase risk, including:

• if a parent has ever broken a hip;
• if you smoke, or drink over 14 units of alcohol a week;
• if you have any medical conditions such as an overactive thyroid or coeliac disease, which can affect how the body absorbs food.

It also highlighted that everyone should consider taking a daily supplement of vitamin D year-round, especially if you use sunscreen most of the time, are pregnant or are breastfeeding.

One other point that caught my attention is that we need as much as 700mg of calcium per day to maintain strong bones, rising to 1,000mg for those at increased risk of osteoporosis.

Most people will hit this target if following a healthy diet, insists Thomson, but if you don’t consume dairy or tend to follow a restricted diet you might want to double-check your intake.

“Calcium is important because it gives your bones the strength and hardness they need to cope with everyday activities,” she says, adding that it is in more food than we realise, including bread, nuts, vegetables, fruit, raisins and calcium-fortified cereals and milks.

“Though it’s always worth reviewing your diet to double-check you’re hitting the quota.”