There are actually two types of osteoporosis: primary osteoporosis and secondary osteoporosis. Either type can affect men, women, and children. Primary osteoporosis is age-related and affects women more severely and earlier in life than men. Secondary osteoporosis is caused by other disease processes or medications used to treat various diseases or problems. Secondary osteoporosis is also more common in women because the illnesses that cause bone loss or the problems that require medications that affect bone remodeling more often affect women. Primary osteoporosis, although occurring in both men and women, is age-related and tends to occur mostly in women and about 10 years earlier than in men. This is because the rate of bone loss is different in women than in men.
Women rapidly lose bone in the 4 to 8 years after menopause, and then continue with a slower rate of bone loss like men, who also experience bone loss over many years. Bone loss from primary osteoporosis is most common in the hip, but can affect all bones in the body. Primary osteoporosis affects the entire skeleton, particularly in women following menopause. Natural menopause is medically defined as the specific point in time occurring after 12 consecutive months with-out a menstrual period that does not have another identifiable cause, such as illness or medication. Postmenopause, the time following menopause, is when many women develop osteoporosis. The decrease in bone mass in postmenopausal women is a direct result of the loss of estrogen. Menopause for any reason (e.g., surgery, chemotherapy) can cause bone loss. Postmenopausal women lose about 2% and sometimes even up to 5% of their bone mass per year for the first 4 to 8 years following menopause.
Twenty percent of their total bone loss takes place in those first 4 to 8 years after menopause. The majority of White women can expect to have osteopenia or osteoporosis once they have been in postmenopause for 10 years. Because primary osteoporosis is caused mostly by estrogen loss in women, one of the preventive treatments for primary osteoporosis in women is estrogen therapy (ET). Estrogen (with or without progesterone) is usually prescribed to prevent osteoporosis only if the woman also has significant other symptoms of menopause such as hot flashes and night sweats. When estrogen therapy is used for the relief of menopause symptoms, it is called menopause hormone therapy (MHT). If you have a uterus, progesterone must be added to the estrogen therapies . An estrogen patch is also available to prevent the bone loss associated with postmenopause. Recent studies indicate that this patch effectively reduces hot flashes as well .