SSRIs and SNRIs like Lexapro and Prozac speed up bone breakdown by stimulating osteoclasts. A meta-analysis found that for every 19 women taking these antidepressants for a year or longer, one additional fracture occurs. Doctors and patients often miss this preventable risk.
Besides just aging, which is its own risk factor, what are some of the top risk factors that the listeners should be aware of for bone health and osteoporosis risk?
The one that I'm most passionate about talking about these days are medications that people are on, because that is a, a potentially modifiable risk factor. It's a huge blind spot conventionally. It's not a side effect that's commonly discussed, if at all. So one of those are anything that elevates serotonin. So SSRIs, SNRIs, Lexapro, Prozac, those antidepressant medications, they destroy bone, they activate osteoclasts. They— osteoclasts are the cells in our bone that, that destroy old worn-out bone and break it down. And so we supercharge those so much so that we know from a meta-analysis that for every 19 women taking an SSRI for 1 or more years, we'll expect 1 of them to break a bone.
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