Book Description
For the eighteen million American women afflicted with early bone-loss disease, here is the first comprehensive guide to identifying and controlling the condition before it progresses to osteoporosis

Osteoporosis, which afflicts more than half of all American women over the age of fifty, is a widespread and all-too-familiar problem. Osteopenia, a milder bone-loss disease that is the forerunner of osteoporosis, is less well known but affects an estimated eighteen million young and middle-aged women-including women in their late teens and early twenties. Since many doctors associate low bone density exclusively with postmenopausal women, millions of women in their childbearing years suffer from undetected bone loss, putting them at risk for debilitating fractures down the road.

In Reversing Osteopenia, Dr. Harris H. McIlwain and his two daughters, also rheumatologists, fill the knowledge gap about this easily diagnosable disease, help younger women recognize the risk factors for bone loss, and provide a five-step program for controlling and even preventing bone loss. Their age-specific recommendations for women in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties include
- exercises that strengthen rather than threaten your bones
- new information about foods that build bone density
- ways to avoid medicines that rob bones of their strength
- recommendations of natural dietary supplements

This groundbreaking book offers new hope for young women at risk for osteopenia.



About the Author
Harris H. McIlwain, M.D., a board-certified rheumatologist, is the founder of the Tampa Medical Group. He has served as chairman of the Florida Osteoporosis Board since its inception five years ago. Town and Country has twice named him one of the best doctors in
America.

Laura McIlwain Cruse, M.D., and Kimberly Lynn McIlwain, M.D., are rheumatologists and board-certified internists in Florida.

Debra Fulghum Bruce, Ph.D., has written more than 2,500 articles and sixty-five books on various health topics.



Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
From Reversing Osteopenia:
Osteopenia, a stage of bone density loss that is the forerunner to osteoporosis, is a silent but deadly condition that leads to painful and deforming fractures. It begins to rob bones during the most productive time of a woman's life-from the childbearing years to perimenopause. Treating osteopenia before full-blown osteoporosis and fractures set in is as effective as treating blood pressure before the stroke, or high cholesterol before the heart attack.

A few osteopenia facts:

A recent study has shown that almost 20 percent of college-age women already have osteopenia. Often, the women at highest risk are the ones who may appear healthiest-thin, athletic, fit.

More than 30 percent of perimenopausal women (late thirties to late forties), and more than half of women fifty years of age and older, suffer from low bone density.

More than 80 percent of those with osteopenia don't know it and are not treated-seven out of ten women over thirty have never even discussed the detection or prevention of low bone mass with their doctors.

The incidence of osteopenia is on the rise, thanks in part to the popularity of coffee and soda, the spread of eating disorders, and the lack of bone-strengthening exercises in many lifestyles.

Despite all this, osteopenia can easily be diagnosed and controlled.

FROM THE PUBLISHER