BRINGING LIGHT TO BONE HEALTH
Tracy Yager, a certified Family Nurse Practitioner, is passionate about what she does: helping patients treat, manage, and, most importantly, preserve, their bone health. “It’s so important,” she urges. Poor bone health, as measured by how dense your bones are, means that what was a minor fall or accident in your forties becomes a major event requiring hospitalization and rehabilitation in your sixties. “Preventing fractures later in life is going to increase quality of life and prevent chronic pain. And I don’t think people realize how important that is. It’s just as important as blood pressure. It’s just as important as diabetes. And even more so because it truly affects your movement and how you want to go about your day, and pain is going to restrict that.” An estimated two million broken bones each year are credited to osteoporosis, or low bone density—bone fractures that often result in immobility, pain, isolation, or nursing home placement.
“Preventative care is crucial. I think one of the most interesting quotes I’ve seen recently is so simple but so true is that ‘Osteoporosis is treatable, if not preventable.’” As the force behind the Osteoporosis & Bone Health Clinic at Colorado Springs Orthopaedic Group, NP Yager brings her impressive skills in family practice and orthopedics and her truly caring and insightful style of care to the clinic each day. “Never get complacent in your life in anything. Always be challenging yourself.” she says, adding that she often spends hours investigating and researching for her patients. “I’m aggressively trying to find the answers to things. If a patient asks me a question that I don’t know, I find the answer.”
And what does NP Yager do for her own bone health? “I started a vitamin D supplement. I think it’s 70% of all Americans are at least insufficient in Vitamin D. I’m really conscious of my calcium intake, making sure I am getting my calcium through my diet primarily. And weight bearing exercises. It’s always best to get your calcium in your diet. Always. Because you are going to absorb it better. And it’s not just dairy. It can be fortified cereals or juices. Lots of vegetables. Canned salmon. Be aware of what foods calcium is actually in.”
For the patients that arrive in her clinic with bone loss, she routinely recommends they: be on a calcium supplement as long as they can tolerate it; be on a Vitamin D supplement; do weightbearing activities, such as strength training, walking with a heel-strike motion (not shuffling) or jumping; and eat a healthy, well-balanced diet getting away from processed foods. “I prefer that to start young,” she adds hopefully. “Even in your thirties, just being conscious of it and starting those good habits.”
She also brings the latest treatments to her patients. “Knowledge about available medications such as our bone builders is very exciting and that is starting to become a little bit more out there in the public…but I would love to see more opportunities for patients. And more research for advancing the bone health field.”
The remarkable framework that supports our body, we each have approximately 206 bones. These twenty to thirty pounds of mostly calcium, phosphorus, and collagen allow us to stand and move, protect vital organs such as the brain and heart, and act as a bank vault, hording vital minerals inside our bones in times of plenty in order to release them into the blood stream when blood levels drop. They can also be a bellwether, indicating other problems in the body. “I’m also making secondary diagnosis’s all the time…sending patients onto specialties like endocrinology for hyperparathyroidism. Making those connections, and even just diving deeper into their own health has changed their [the patients] lives.”
NP Yager was on the receiving end of how bone health can change a life. “I had a benign bone tumor in my right tibia, and at age seventeen had it removed,” she says, recalling the surgery and overnight hospitalization. “I remember my nurse woke me to give me my pain medicine, and I told her ‘You are an angel. This is such a wonderful profession.’” Those moments in the dark were enlightening. Later on, in college, “A lightbulb went off: I want to go to nursing school. I wanted to do something like this in my career.” That lightbulb moment led to her graduating with honors with a Master of Science in Nursing and working in Internal Medicine and Orthopaedic clinics prior to relocating here. “This was absolutely the best move we could have ever made for ourselves and our family. It just feels good. I have an amazing community…we have beautiful Pikes Peak views. It feels right. This definitely feels like our forever home.”
“It has come full circle…” NP Yager says of her life, from a bone-related health concern to bone health expert in one of the leading clinics in the region. Her patients use the words welcoming, caring, personable, patient, helpful to describe her: also including knowledgeable, professional, and thorough to her virtues. “My philosophy is care and attention…being a little bit more present and spending a little bit more time.”
“I leave every single patient room with the intent of making sure they were heard and that I am going to do everything in my power to continue their care to the best of my ability. Because I think that is so important. Again, you can’t get complacent about it. it’s not just a job. It’s these people’s lives. And I care about that very much. I truly feel like this is my calling: 100%.”
She fell in love with the field of bone health immediately, when her husband, an orthopaedic surgeon, identified her natural strengths for meticulous care and exemplary communication, as well as her background in primary care and orthopaedic care, as being a great fit, and encouraged her to apply. “It’s kind of a perfect mix between medicine and orthopaedics,” she says about bone health, adding, “It’s such a unique part of medicine. I feel like I’m learning right there with them [my patients] in a way. And that’s what medicine is. Everyone doesn’t always have the exact answer. It’s always evolving, and that is really intriguing to me. And bone health especially is evolving. Always. There’s always something new that comes into play. I feel like I’ve grown, and my life has changed just because I do have this whole new community of support. There’s a whole bone health community out there and this is their passion. And it’s just so cool that I’m a part of that now.”
