You may think you know enough about osteoporosis without reading a whole book on it. Take calcium, try not to fall down the basement steps, be prepared to shrink three or four inches as you get older, and so on, right? What else is there to know? Plenty, as we hope you"ll agree after reading this book. The unfortunate fact is that although nobody wants to have osteoporosis, not enough people take steps to decrease their chances of developing it. Considering that your odds of developing osteoporosis in the United States today are around 40 percent if you"re female and 10 percent if you"re male, many people are leaving the fate of their bones to chance. One of our goals in writing this book is to keep you from developing osteoporosis. However, if you already have osteoporosis, our goal is to minimize the damage it does to your bones, through medication, healthy eating, and exercise. If you"ve already fallen and broken bones, we want to help you avoid another fall. If you have children or grandchildren, we hope that you"ll nag them into taking steps to avoid falling into osteoporosis themselves. We want to help you have healthy bones. We also want you to avoid spending months in casts or in surgery after falls that break bones you really need to stay mobile. You can prevent osteoporosis or at least reduce its severity, but it takes lifestyle changes that start in childhood. Is it worth it? Ask anyone who"s spent six months recovering from a broken hip. Does it take discipline? Yes-but so does learning to walk again. Nothing in life is simple, but our goal is to educate you as painlessly as possible to the high cost of osteoporosis, and the newest ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat it. Don"t fall into the trap of believing that osteoporosis is inevitable; we"re here to help you avoid the bad breaks.