Forget to Take Your Weekly (or Monthly) Drug for Osteopororsis? Now You Can Take Once a Year.

Osteoporosis makes your bones weak and more likely to break. Anyone can develop osteoporosis, but it is common in older women. As many as half of all women and a quarter of men older than 50 will break a bone due to osteoporosis.

Risk factors include

• Getting older

• Being small and thin

• Having a family history of osteoporosis

• Taking certain medicines

• Being a white or Asian woman

• Having osteopenia, which is low bone mass

Osteoporosis is a silent disease. You might not know you have it until you break a bone. A bone mineral density test is the best way to check your bone health. To keep bones strong, eat a diet rich in calcium and vitamin D, exercise and do not smoke.

If needed, medicines can also help. Bi-Phosphates have been the medication in the forefront to treat osteoporosis. However, along with side effects (and, all drugs have side effects), inconvenience has ranked front and central to taking these drugs.

They are taken either every week, or every month. They must be taken first thing in the morning. You may not eat or drink anything for at least an hour (except for water, which you must drink a lot of to help the absorption of this volatile drug). You also must sit or stand up right, in the hour after taking your osteoporotic medication.

Not only is this all inconvenient, it is easy to forget. Especially, if you are retired, and one day melds into another. If you forget to take your drugs, it is highly unlikely that they will treat your disease.

Now, the FDA has approved a once a year drug, Reclast, for treating osteoporosis. It is not a pill. It is administered intravenously over 15 minutes. However, once you are done, you are done. You do not have to worry about it for another year.

Side effects are the same as with any biphosphate. However, it is more effective. Additionally, seventy percent of the women taking Reclast suffered fractures as compared to 40% for those taking the oral pill. It is anticipated that this drug will make the present oral drugs a 'thing of the past' in the very near future.