Salima Ladak-Kachra of Toronto was just 25 when she discovered the ongoing back pain she’d been experiencing was the result of osteoporosis.
After she took a fall on a ceramic floor, X-rays showed she had broken her vertebrae in four places – but they also revealed the telltale signs of previous fractures that were still healing.
“I was actually having fractures and not knowing it,” said Ladak-Kachra, adding that because of her young age, doctors hadn’t considered osteoporosis as a cause of her earlier back pain.
But Ladak-Kachra had several risk factors: she was underweight for her height, didn’t eat calcium-rich dairy products, got no weight-bearing exercise and both her parents had the bone-thinning disease.
Now 40, the married mother of two has put on weight, eats a healthy diet and exercises. But she has lost more than an inch in height due to a compressed spine and still suffers chronic back pain that makes tasks such as doing the laundry or making beds difficult.
“Osteoporosis is not just an elder person’s disease,” said Ladak-Kachra, who has run an osteoporosis clinic for the last 12 years. “It’s a multifactorial disease that can happen to anyone.”
Ismailimail 