Eat well, Duchess tells young as she recalls ‘agonising’ death of mother
THE Duchess of Cornwall has spoken of the “agonising” death of her mother and grandmother as she warned young people to build up bone strength to avoid the same fate.
The Duchess. in her role as president of the National Osteoporosis Society, recalled the “pain and ignominy” of the disease that caused the death of both Rosalind Shand and Sonia Keppel.
She advised a diet with lots of vitamin D as well as plenty of exercise to ward off the bone-weakening condition. The Duchess said that as a young woman she had been “blissfully unaware” of the causes and devastating effects of osteoporosis, and warned that it is too late to attempt to build up bone strength beyond the age of 30.
The disease affects three million people in the UK, the majority women. It weakens bones, making them more liable to fracture, and in old people it can cause a “dowager” stoop.
The Duchess has described the “heartbreaking” experience of watching her mother shrink 8in in her latter years before dying aged 72 in 1994. To- wards, the end of her life, Mrs Shand became so stooped she could no longer digest food. “Sadly, as I grew older, I learned a great deal more about osteoporosis at first hand, as I watched both my mother and grandmother suffer the pain and ignominy of this agonising disease,” the Duchess said.
“So what message would I send to my younger self, now that I have learned so much more about it? Eat a healthy diet with plenty of calcium and vitamin D and take plenty of exercise. Both are crucial for strong and healthy bones.” The foundations of strong bones are laid in people’s 20s. After the age of 30, it is no longer possible to build bone strength, but only to maintain what strength already exists.
Statistics indicate that half of women and one in five men develop osteoporosis after the age of 50. Losing bone density is a normal part of the ageing process, but women are particularly susceptible due to the menopause.
The condition usually manifests itself in painful and slow-to-heal fractures of the wrist and hip, although in severe cases a cough or sneeze can cause a rib fracture of the partial collapse of the spinal column. The Duchess, who became society president in 2001, has described how “my family and I watched in horror as my mother quite literally shrank in front of our eyes. I believe that the quality of her life became so dismal, and her suffering so unbearable, that she just gave up the fight and lost the will to live”.
Sonia Keppel, the Duchess’s grandmother, died in 1986, aged 86, having also had osteoporosis. The society advises eating most dairy products, green leafy vegetables, broccoli and beans as well as lifting weights.