Osteoporosis Prevention With Calcium and Vitamin D Supplements

Featuring Dr. John Wade, MD, FRCPC, Rheumatologist

Duration: 1 minute

So osteoporosis û we break down treatment into lifestyle intervention and then medications.

Lifestyle interventions are something that everybody should be doing as we age, and those are primarily dietary and exercise. So the current recommendations for osteoporosis, and probably apply whether you have osteoporosis or not, is you want an appropriate calcium supplementation and Vitamin D supplementation.

So the current recommendations are a total recommendation dose of calcium of 1200 milligrams a day; that's both diet and supplement. So if you have good dietary calcium, you probably don't need to have a calcium supplement.

Vitamin D is probably a little bit more important because we probably don't get enough of Vitamin D in our diet, and probably we should be supplementing, probably not during the summer months û we're exposed to sun, but certainly in the winter months, it's probably recommended that you take Vitamin D. And the current recommended doses of Vitamin D are 1000-2000 units of Vitamin D daily.

If you have questions about osteoporosis, contact a local rheumatologist.

Presenter: Dr. John Wade, Rheumatologist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Rheumatologist