Meredith Vieira: 'There's No Excuse for Not Thinking About Bone Health'

Osteoporosis: the disease old ladies get?

There's a tendency to think of it like that, and to flat-out shove the common condition off the shelf of health problems to worry about, Meredith Vieira says – until the damage is too obvious to keep tuning out.

"It's a silent disease in the sense that you don't have any awareness of it until you break a bone," says Vieira, the popular journalist and talk-show host. "There's no excuse for not knowing about bone health and being proactive with your doctor."

Vieira, 63, who's teamed up with bonenews.com, is opening up about her connection to osteoporosis, which affects about 10 million Americans over age 50, and the link between fractures and postmenopausal women.

When her mother, Mary Elsie Vieira, was in her 60s, she started to develop dowager's hump – a curving of the spine that gives it a hump-like appearance. "I never put it together with osteoporosis. I just thought it was part of the natural aging process," Vieira recalls. "And then she had a fall, and it was a low-impact fall, but she broke her pelvis. At the time, she just attributed it to being clumsy and not seeing the stair; back then, there wasn't much conversation around osteoporosis."

Eventually, it became clear that Vieira's mother did indeed have the condition, which causes bones to become so brittle and fragile that even a minor stress, like bending over or coughing, could cause a fracture. It's typically precipitated by hormonal changes, like menopause, or dietary factors, such as low calcium intake or an eating disorder.

"I was surprised at my own ignorance more than anything else," Vieira says of her mother's diagnosis, given that the condition is so prevalent. Consider the stats: Worldwide, an osteoporotic fracture occurs every 3 seconds. Such injuries cause more women 55 and older to be hospitalized each year in the U.S. than breast cancer, heart attacks or strokes, according to bonenews.com. And nearly 1 in 2 women over age 50 will have such a fracture in her remaining lifetime.

"It made me think about my own bone health in a way I probably wouldn't have otherwise," Vieira says. "Nobody wants to talk about menopause or post-menopause, but the fact is, we're all living to be much older than 20 years ago, 30 years ago. I want to live a very healthy life moving forward, and I don't want to be limited by something where if I just knew more about it, I could be more proactive."

Speaking of which: About 13 years ago, when she became post-menopausal, Vieira had a regular check-up with her doctor – who, upon learning about her family history of osteoporosis, said he wanted to do a bone mineral density test. It turned out that Vieira has osteopenia of the spine: bone density that's lower than normal peak density but not low enough to be classified as osteoporosis. She's now proactive about preserving her bone health, both via diet and keeping active. "I'm very aware of calcium and vitamin D," she says. "And weight-bearing exercise is really important – it can be just taking a walk every day, or hiking or swimming. Anything that's going to keep your bones strong."

Vieira encourages women to make bone health a priority and become educated about the early warning signs of a problem. "It often doesn't come up during an exam unless you bring it up," she says. "And if you're post-menopausal and have a break, don't attribute it to clumsiness. Make sure you see a doctor and point out you want to talk about osteoporosis, because there's help out there, and there's treatment. Fifty percent of us are going to break a bone because of osteoporosis, so you're definitely not alone."