Hi Karen and Namita(yours is below Karen's)
Karen,
Yes the medicine given IM is one of the strongest, a lot time given to cancer patients, and it will make your body put more good calcium back into the bone, and if you take it long enough, with the right diet and exercise you can make your bones pre-osteopenia dense. I would have gave anything to get this stuff about 5 years ago, but at the time you had to have cancer to get your insurance to pay for it. And I couldn’t afford the injects on my own. So they went with the nose spray which is the next in line, the pills once a week is the first or beginning step, above diet. So your doctor thinks this is pretty serious, do take the IM, and check into the other methods for the over all use, and to keep your bones absorbing more, The IM is the fastest and strongest of all treatments. And do up your diet naturally with more calcium as a lot of green leafy stuff has quite a bit in it, so you don’t have a lot of calories, but milk is the best.
All the treatments, turn on the bodies processes, for calcium input, so when you drink/eat calicum, you get a much higher absorbion rate that you naturally would. Each type of treatment dictates how high of absorbion.
Also you haven't been on prednisone or anything like that, have you or had more then one child? Both draw out calicum like a leech.
Also anyone who is worried about bone loss, get a Dexa scan any doctor can order this, and get results. It's a very simple test; you lie on a bed, and let this big bar, slide back and forth above your body. Takes about 20 minutes. And I just had mine done Tuesday. I seriously recommend this test for anyone who didn't get very good calcium during the teen years, or anytime in their life. Or has had more then one child (females only on that part). This test will tell your bones are at this level. And with diet and exercise you can improve them, it's slow without the meds but very do able.
Namita
As for calcium products the one that has been recommended serval times by quite a few different doctors is OScal with vitamin D. And get some sun light 30 minutes a day, to activate the vitamin D. But diet is very very important as all pill, OTC or percription, get half eaten by your stomach acid, before it passes to the digestive track, this means if you too 500 mg, your body only has 250 mg available, and usually you can’t absorb all of the 250mg before you pass it to the small intestine, and then anything left gets toss out. So really up your diet with calcium, it’s the best way to get the most absorbiton rate of calcium. Or any vitamin or mineral for that matter. Or your body only will get a very small amount of the calcium. Also if your worry, check with your doctor, they may put you on the pill once a week which makes your bones absorb calcium fast and better. There are a ton of names for it, but they all do the same thing. Only catch with the pill is your can’t lay back down after you take it (not for 2 hours after taken), and you need to drink at least 8 oz of cool/cold water with it, within the hour you first take it.
This is really becoming an epidemic, I see 8 year olds who already have osteopenia. But don't fool yourself and push your doctor for this test if you’re worried at all. You can use this test to prevent osteoporosis. And trust me, you don't want to pick up a 20 lb bag of books one day and compress your spine like I did. That's how I found out that my workouts weren't enough compared to what the medicine was doing. I had just turned 25 at the time, so it's never too early to prevent, pain for life. For if you get bad osteoporosis, you will have pain, more then likely you won't be able to do Cathe for quite a while, as you'll be turned into a china doll, fall and you'll break something in more then one place. As I found that out, I was put on fossilemax, slipped on the ice that was in the parking lot, and broke every rib in my rib cage in at least one place. And I landed on my butt, I didn't go down on my back, but it was like a chain reaction. That day they switched me to the nose spray, which really helped the bone scan that I had six months later showed a huge improvement.
Kit