Lora Giangregorio, PhD 🇨🇦

ALT What types of activities cause most fractures in people over 50? From approximately 10 years of follow-up in the Canadian Multicenter Osteoporosis Study, we learned that most fractures happen during everyday activities, with 18% occurring during slips and trips indoors and 35% occurring during slips and trips outdoors. Falls are the most common cause, accounting for 70–84% of non-spine fractures (such as forearm, upper arm, and hip fractures) and about 40% of spine fractures. In contrast, only around 6% of fractures were reported to occur during sports. Overall, the key takeaway is that most fractures happen during everyday activities. A few things to note: fractures were self-reported through follow-up questionnaires but were verified using X-rays, the study included a large sample of people from multiple provinces, and the data were collected many years ago, so activity patterns may have changed (for example, pickleball was not popular at the time)