EmpowHer asks Dr. Neil Binkley if there's a connection to drinking carbonated soft drinks and porous bones?

Dr. Binkley: That sounds like a simple question. The short answer is yes, there is an association. As a society, we have replaced a food that has a large amount of important bone nutrients -— milk -— with a food that has almost no nutritional value -— diet soda.

Forty years ago in 1967 nearly 200 nuns in the Omaha area enrolled in a study run by Creighton University researcher Dr. Robert Heaney. Results gathered over 25 years of in-hospital studies and later from bi-yearly checkups served as the basis for the calcium intake recommendations for adult women.

EmpowHer: Is it true that 80 percent of those affected by osteoporosis are women? Is that true or false?

EmpowHer: "Doctor, talk with us about the connection then between vitamin D, calcium, and osteoporosis.”

EmpowHer: Talk about identification. How do health care professionals identify a patient who has osteoporosis? What are the tests called, and are these tests commonly covered in most health insurance plans?