Dr. Sagen Zac-Varghese

There are other anti-resorptive agents.

Denosumab stops your osteoclasts from maturing.

And then we more recently have bone building agents, anabolic agents.

So these help your osteoblasts.

So they help your osteoblasts make new bone.

And these are versions of your parathyroid hormone.

So it sounds confusing because I've told you already that if you have too much parathyroid hormone, you have thin bones.

So if you have continuous parathyroid hormone, that stimulates your osteoclasts.

When you have intermittent parathyroid hormone, that stimulates your osteoblasts.

It helps you build bone.

So we now have drugs, teriparatide, abaloparatide, that you can take for one to two years, and that will help you build new bone.

Yeah, super question that.

So I was worried about my mum.

So I'm doing all this research, I'm seeing all these patients in clinics and I was thinking, wait a minute, my mum isn't on anything and she's fine.

So you can yourself put your data, you can put your age, your height and your weight and your risk factors into a calculator called FRAX and you can see what your risk is.

It will tell you if you're low risk, intermediate risk or high risk.

And if it's intermediate, it will even tell you if you need a DEXA scan.

And that FRAX is for people aged between 40 to 90.

It's not for younger people.

It's not for older people.