Warning to men after shock bone diagnosis

WHEN Ben Atfield was told he had osteoporosis at the age of 56 he had no idea of the impact it would have on his life.

- By Jaymi McCann

The business leader had been suf-fering with a sore back for months when his GP told him to take some painkillers in 2023. The severity of his illness was only discovered when an unrelated heart scan showed one of his vertebrae was fractured.

Ben, now 58, said: “My wife told me, ‘You've probably got osteoporosis’. I said, ‘I can’t have, I’m a man’.

“It did not occur to me in a million years that I could have a bone disease. I later discovered my vertebrae had collapsed because of osteoporosis. I am now a little bit shorter.”

He added: “My friends and colleagues said they thought osteoporosis only happens to people who are very old and to older women.