The relationship of stress to bone loss in postmenopausal women

Abstract

The objective of this research is to establish the relationship between stress and bone loss, and to determine to what extent it can be mediated by changes in individual perceptions and behavior. It utilizes the results of a sixteen year longitudinal osteoporosis study and is augmented by extensive in-home interviews to assess pertinent psychosocial and health regime factors. The salience of the mind-body-spirit experience is applied to the topic of osteoporosis, a cogent and immediate concern for all women. As a chronic condition of aging, the impact of osteoporosis on the morbidity and mortality of women has long been a concern of health practitioners, anthropologists, and epidemiologists. It presents a formidable threat to quality of life for postmenopausal women. This paper has been developed to explore the possibility that life changes, adjustments and stressors, might have a deleterious effect on bone density in aging women. The attempt to analyze whether bone loss accelerated under stress could not be unequivocally determined. In the process of interview and qualitative analysis it was revealed that the personal strengths of the subjects including positive attitudes, hardiness, and coping styles may well have buffered such losses. In this population, bone loss clearly associated with aging was not as clearly amenable to interventions by the subjects in terms of health and lifestyle behaviors as it appeared to be when bone density changes were not significantly attached to age.