Understanding Osteoporosis and Taking Charge of Your Bone Health
An evidence-based guide for people who want to understand osteoporosis, make sense of their treatment options, and take an active role in protecting their bones—through nutrition, exercise, medication, and everyday choices.
Osteoporosis can be confusing. Understanding it shouldn’t be.
A diagnosis of osteoporosis can raise more questions than it answers. What does a T-score really mean? How great is your fracture risk? Which treatments help, what are their risks, and what can you do for yourself? Strong Bones was written to help you understand the evidence, ask better questions, and make informed decisions about your bone health.
Understand
Learn what osteoporosis is, how bones change, and what your test results mean.
Decide
Compare treatment options, benefits and risks, and the questions to ask before deciding.
Act
Use nutrition, exercise, fall prevention, and everyday choices to help protect your bones.
Why I wrote Strong Bones
I began this book as a patient, not as a bone-health expert. After being diagnosed with osteoporosis, I was suddenly faced with treatment decisions I didn’t fully understand—and questions I hadn’t known to ask. As a longtime technical communicator and health educator, my instinct was to start researching. The more I learned, the more I realized how difficult it can be for patients to find clear, balanced information that puts the evidence in context.
Strong Bones grew out of that search. I wrote the book I wanted when I was diagnosed: one that explains the science in plain language, takes both benefits and risks seriously, and helps readers become informed participants in decisions about their own bone health.
Inside Strong Bones
From understanding your diagnosis to deciding what to do next, Strong Bones follows the questions that arise when bone health suddenly becomes personal.
Your living skeleton
Discover how bone constantly renews itself, responds to the demands you place on it, and changes throughout your life.
Making sense of your diagnosis
Understand what DXA scans and T-scores can—and can’t—tell you, what “osteoporosis” really means, and why fracture risk involves more than bone density.
Building stronger foundations
Explore the evidence for nutrition, strength and balance training, safe movement, and fall prevention—and the everyday choices that support healthy bones.
Looking beneath the surface
Learn about secondary causes of bone loss, medications, and health conditions that can affect bone, and why a thorough evaluation matters.
Making treatment decisions
Understand osteoporosis treatments and medications, their potential benefits and risks, questions about monitoring and stopping treatment, and how to participate meaningfully in decisions about your care.
And throughout the book: practical ways to stay active, independent, informed, and confident while living with osteoporosis.
Start with better questions
Osteoporosis decisions are rarely as simple as a number on a scan or a prescription handed across a desk. Strong Bones is designed to help you understand the evidence, recognize the questions that matter, and have more informed conversations about your bone health.