QUETTA: Of the 10 million Pakistanis suffering from osteoporosis some 80 per cent are women.

Prof Lal Muhammad Kakar, the president of Balochistan chapter of the Orthopaedic Society, disclosed this during a lecture at the Garrison Academy on Thursday.

Prof Kakar, an orthopaedic surgeon, quoted a medical survey and said that 61m people worldwide were putting up with the ailment while lack of awareness was also serving to fuel the number of such patients.

“Osteoporosis is a disease in which bones start thinning, weakening and its mass gets reduced,” he said.

Osteoporosis attacks the body because of the deficiencies of calcium and vitamin D, while smoking and abundance of salt consumption are major causes behind the affliction, he said.

Dr Kakar said women were more prone to the disease because they did not consume milk and dairy products in sufficient quantities. They also mostly stayed away from the sun which could provide them with vitamin D.

Vitamin D helps in absorption of calcium because extra salt drains out calcium from the body through urine.

Diabetics, kidney patients and lean-structured people were more at the risk of osteoporosis.

He advised regular intake of calcium and vitamin D and physical exercise to ward off the ailment.

Hip fractures, he said, were common among those suffering from osteoporosis.

Uzma Khalid, the principal of the Garrison Academy, told the students to take dairy products regularly and also motivate their female family members to keep osteoporosis away by drinking milk on a regular basis.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2014