Incorrect diets in adolescence can affect the skeleton to the point of causing osteoporosis even in young women, with an increased risk of fractures.
Marta’s story has a happy ending, but many have not had the same luck as her. Marta fell ill with anorexia as a teenager and, in addition to risking her life for her eating disorder, she was barely eighteen years old and found herself with bones as fragile as glass, which risked breaking for a trifle.
The story of Marta
A little considered “side effect” of anorexia, osteoporosis, but which can seriously compromise the quality of life of those who manage to leave problems with food behind.adolescencewhen the eating disorder very often makes its appearance, it is also the time when much of the accumulation bone mass, creating the bone reserves that will accompany throughout adulthood. A unbalanced diet at this stage of life it is therefore more dangerous always, but Marta didn’t know it when she got sick. “I had long had food problems, which then exploded during the second year of high school,” says Marta. “I was treated for a long time at a Center for Eating Disorders and several times I was subjected to bone mineralometry (the test to evaluate the quantity and density of the bone, ed). In the beginning I had one osteopenia, that is, a “simple” reduction in bone mass, which then quickly turned into osteoporosis. At 22 I was i hormone dosages and the bones of a seventy-year-old, not even my mother at 76 had a skeleton so broken. ”
Therapies are possible
Thanks to a good psychotherapist, Marta came out of the anorexia nightmare, but the doctors told her that there was nothing to be done about her bones: she had started eating again, but she could not assimilate soccer e vitamin D
. “I was taking supplements but I didn’t tolerate them well,” adds Marta. “I felt hopeless: I had been diagnosed with a high risk of fracture of the femur
and they only knew how to tell me to be careful how I moved, to avoid falling. It was terrible, I had the feeling that I had hurt myself with my hands and that there was no hope or solution for me ». This was not the case, as Maria Luisa Brandi, president of the Firmo Foundation for Bone Diseases specifies: “The many young women who fall ill with eating disorders and therefore develop osteoporosis are told that there is no possibility of a cure and is perhaps given, as in Marta, the estroprogestin pill: a mistake, because the first thing that the body “spares” when it does not receive enough nourishment due to anorexia is precisely the monthly bleeding, which disappears quickly in patients. The “fake period” given by the pill gives a semblance of normality, but the estrogen from the pill is of little use and does not sufficiently help the bones of these patients. We need the anti-fracture drugs that we use in post-menopause: they are not indicated for use at a young age, but we can prescribe them according to the critical metabolic condition of these patients and the need to avoid fractures. The use of these drugs, in other words, occurs outside the therapeutic indications but is legitimized by the clinical need of these girls, who otherwise undergo serious and disabling fractures at a very young age. Of course, patients must be informed and aware, but doing nothing would be cowardly if, after carefully evaluating the metabolism, it is believed that there is room for improvement with therapy ».
False beliefs about foods
For Marta it was like this: she started therapy and in a short time she saw the first results. “After only a year my bone mass had already improved, which gave me a big boost to continue and take care of my bones,” she says. Brandi confirms: «We try the drugs and see how the organism reacts: if the answer is evident, as in the case of Marta, the patients find hope and motivation. Unfortunately, many are left to themselves and nothing is done to treat them. ” However, following the treatments was not all roses for Marta: «Not for the side effects, because I didn’t have any, nor for the therapy, which is neither invasive nor painful. I also changed my lifestyle a lot, always exercising and increasing the consumption of dairy products. The problem was the many who, without having any title, told me that I was crazy to eat Parmesan or drink milk: there are so many urban legends about it that can be dangerous for those who, like me, literally have to rebuild your bones. At the beginning I tried to counter and dismantle all the rumors that reached my ears, now not anymore. But it is important that all girls battling an eating disorder know that something can be done for their bones: it is not true that we have no hope. “
May 31, 2022 (change May 31, 2022 | 11:40 am)
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