‘I’m healthy, I EXERCISE… so why do I have the BONES of a 90old?’ year
It was a huge shock for Dr Sarah Jarvis to discover she has severe osteoporosis. Here, she reveals what may have led to her diagnosis – and shares how you can keep your bones strong
Iwanted to be a GP from the age of eight, and I’d been fascinated with all things health and medicine even before that. Despite my own children being all grown-up now, they still tease me about being ‘the food police’ because I’m so obsessed with them eating their vegetables. I also firmly believe in practising the healthy lifestyle advice that I preach and, as such, I’ve never considered myself to be at high risk of any condition. That’s why the results of a bone density scan a few months ago, which showed that, at the age of 60, I have a degree of osteoporosis I’m only used to seeing in my 90-year-old patients, totally knocked me for six.
DID MY CHILDHOOD INCREASE MY RISK?
I’m a typical redhead – blue eyes, freckles and pale skin that has only two shades: translucent or lobster. I was adopted into a family of sun-worshippers in an era where sunscreen was considered a luxury and the strongest form available was SPF14. There was only so much time I could spend on our beach holidays cowering under the sun umbrella. Consequently, I blistered more times than I care to remember and lost a whole layer of skin from my back on one occasion.
Once I got to medical school it rapidly became clear to me that too much sun exposure, especially in childhood, greatly increases your risk of malignant melanoma. As a result, I have avoided the sun assiduously ever since. My aim on any holiday is to come back the same colour as I left, regardless of the destination.
It’s only in the last decade or so that doctors have understood the implications of a lack of the ‘sunshine vitamin’. Made largely in the skin when exposed to sunshine, Vitamin D plays a key part in regulating the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body, reducing the risk of osteoporosis. When I had my levels checked about 10 years ago they were in my boots and I have taken supplements ever since – but that meant I’d been low in vitamin D for over 40 years.