Episode Transcript
Interviewer: You notice that you're not actually the same height as you were maybe a decade ago and you're wondering if maybe this is normal or not. We'll tell you, up next on The Scope.
Announcer: Questions every woman wonders about her health, body, and mind. This is "Am I Normal?" on The Scope.
Interviewer: We're talking with Dr. Kirtly Parker Jones. She's the expert on all things woman. And today on "Am I Normal?" I have a question not from me specifically, but I've noticed that my mom, I think she is shrinking.
Dr. Jones: Oh!
Interviewer: I think she's getting smaller and smaller.
Dr. Jones: She is? That's so sad.
Interviewer: Is this normal?
Dr. Jones: Yes, it is. In fact, there are really two kinds of normal shrinking, one which is pretty okay and one sort of not so okay.
Interviewer: Okay.
Dr. Jones: So I've noticed the same thing. My sons stopped growing, I'm sure, 10 years ago or 15 years ago, but I am getting smaller and smaller as I get older and older. So what makes us tall? Well, we're tall because of the length of our leg bones and we're tall because of our back. And our back is mostly made up of our vertebrae, which are kind of like building blocks. But in between those building blocks are our discs. And the inter-disc space gets kind of squished down. Over time, as you get older, the discs get flatter. Everybody's discs, like a pillow, like your favorite pillow, which on the job . . .
Interviewer: And it's getting flatter and flatter.
Dr. Jones: We keep getting flatter and flatter and you need a new pillow. But I'm afraid I would love to have a disc . . . actually, I'd like to have 15 disc transplants, but you can't have that. So that's the major reason that men and women tend to get smaller with the age and women more markedly. Now, the second reason, remember that our long bones really don't shrink that much. There is some cartilage between the knee, but it doesn't contribute too much. So mostly, it's our spine.
Interviewer: So it's all the back.
Dr. Jones: It's all in the back. So what happens is imagine that we have a square block that's made of really hard wood. But it gets thinner and thinner and then it collapses. So that vertebra itself may collapse. So if the vertebrae itself start collapsing, that can be a problem because sometimes it collapses evenly. So it's a square that kind of gets squished a little. But sometimes, and more commonly, it collapses unevenly, meaning the front part of that square, the square that points front collapses in the back. So it makes kind of a triangle. And that's why you see more older women than men, but some older men, their back is all curled over.
Interviewer: I noticed that, yeah!
Dr. Jones: Right. So they're shorter because their vertebra have squished. But they're also now all bent over and that can certainly cause pain. So a squished or collapse vertebrae can cause pain. But when you're all squished over then you have to kink your neck to look up and then it can cause neck problems. And when you're all kind of kinked over, that means your balance isn't so great and you're more likely to fall. And, of course, if your bones are all that thin and you fall, then you break something else.
So the first kind of squishing is very common and it usually isn't all that harmful, although it can be because keeping your bones aligned is really important. Those vertebrae are supposed to sit like blocks on top of each other and not slip sideways. Anyway, our disc space getting smaller is perfectly normal. Having vertebral collapse is very common as we age, particularly in the very elderly.
But it's not healthy. So what do we do about that? In fact, for women, we should be watching our bone density from the time we're young. And I'll consider you young. We should be thinking about our bone density and we make our bone strong by using them, by stressing them, giving them enough calcium, and giving them estrogen because estrogen for men and women makes their bones strong.
But as we may go to menopause, it's work to keep your bones stronger because we don't have estrogens anymore, although some women take estrogens. It's recommended that women, by the time they're 65, get a bone density. And if their bone density is decreasing in their vertebrae, then we encourage women to consider taking medications that slow bone loss. Because the kind of shrinking that's asymmetrical, that causes shrinking in our vertebral boxes, that's not healthy and can make you feel sick and it can make you fall and then you break something else. So, yeah, your mom shrinking, isn't she cute?
Interviewer: But that's normal.
Dr. Jones: But you're going to shrink too.
Interviewer: I am going to shrink, apparently, according to you.
Dr. Jones: You're going to shrink too. But you have many, many years ahead of you. But you want the okay shrinking of your discs and not the breakage of your vertebrae. So the answer is, yep, we're going to get shorter. Your mom is getting shorter and that's probably normal.
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