Why osteoporosis is catching NZ men off guard

Paulette Crowley

Contributing writer·New Zealand Listener·

9 Feb, 2026 05:06 PM6 mins to read

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Like many men, Geoff James didn’t know he was at risk of osteoporosis until he broke his femur in a mountain biking accident. Photo / Supplied

Osteoporosis is a silent disease that creeps up as we age, but it’s often not diagnosed until we fracture a bone. The condition is more common in women but men are not immune from it, as Coromandel’s Geoff James found out. He talks to Paulette Crowley about what it’s like
to be among the one in three New Zealand men who each year learn they’ve got osteoporosis.

I was 75 when I got my first e-mountain bike. I’ve ridden motorcycles for most of my life, so I got used to the e-bike quickly, but it turns out I wasn’t anywhere near as good as I thought I was. Maybe this was from being out of practice, or because I’d recently recovered from having a knee replaced from an old sporting injury.

I went out for a late afternoon ride on quite a tricky course just outside the Coromandel township, near where I live. I got wheel spin on a tricky uphill section, flipped off the bike and down I went. I lost it big time. I knew I’d done myself a lot of harm as soon as I hit the ground. My right leg just wobbled about and I was in a lot of pain. I pulled myself to the side of the track, where I called my wife. I wasn’t expecting tea and sympathy but the telling off I received firmly put me in my place as an old idiot who should know better. She then called an ambulance.

The ambulance crew had to come from Whitianga, an hour’s drive away. I was getting massive muscle cramps and spasms in my leg. To try and stop them, I was hanging on to my injured leg and pushing it against the other. I was in a bit of a state. Less than 10 minutes after the accident, a lady walking her dog came past. We managed to use a dog lead to tie my legs together to help ease the pain.

The ambulance crew must have called my GP, Brian, because he, a member of his team and my wife were the first to arrive, about half a kilometre from the start of the track. Brian gave me a shot of ketamine to take some of the pain away, which I was very grateful for. A number of local people started turning up, including the owner of a fishing charter business. He was able to back his ute very carefully into the quite narrow trail where I was. They then gave me another shot of ketamine and lifted me on board the trailer. That is something I never want to go through again. Very, very slowly they got me out to the main road, where the ambulance met me to take me through to Waikato Hospital.

The next day I had surgery, where they pinned my broken femur back together. Back home, when I was convalescing, Kerry, the nurse in charge of the regional fracture liaison service, rang. She offered me the chance to go in for a bone scan. It revealed I had a degree of osteoporosis, a condition where the bones lack density, which makes them susceptible to fracture. I was aware that women often get osteoporosis, but she explained that both sexes can develop the condition as they get older.

Kerry spoke to me about various treatment options which completely took away my fear of the unknown. I made an appointment with my GP to get started and began a fairly straightforward treatment of taking a tablet once a week. After you’ve swallowed it with a glass of water you have to stay upright for half an hour, because it can irritate your oesophagus. But it’s no big deal. I’ve also been doing strength conditioning at the gym three times a week. These efforts seemed to have paid off because a recent blood test for whatever they check for with osteoporosis showed a normal result.

My situation isn’t unique. Many older New Zealanders discover they have osteoporosis only after fracturing a bone. I personally know some people who have broken a bone from having a simple fall at home by doing something like tripping over a rug, let alone from riding e-mountain bikes on gnarly old goat tracks.

I’m one of the lucky ones. With osteoporosis, you can lose your quality of life and it costs the health service a fortune to keep you going. I would like to see screening more freely advertised and available to people of a certain age, just the same as you might get tested for diabetes or any other disorder.

For some people, me especially, there’s a difference between mental age and physical age. I’ve come to a realisation that I’m not as young as I was and that I had better start looking a bit harder at what I can and can’t do. Recently, I had to do some ladder work outside of the house and my wife basically put me through a safety plan until she was satisfied that I wasn’t going to do any more damage to myself. With some of the dumb things I’ve done during the years, she says it’s been like living with a five-year-old! I still do stuff without asking her permission (when she won’t see it) but mostly, this e-mountain bike event has caused me to pause about acting my age.

I’m 78 now and back doing a bit of cycling but I’m a little gun-shy about cycling rough trails, mostly because my wife has threatened to kill me if I do! We travel and do quite a bit of walking overseas and it’ll be nice to be able to continue to enjoy that while we can. I’m quite determined to be as active as I can be for however long I’m on this earth.

The help I received from the New Zealand health service at every stage couldn’t be faulted and I’m indebted to each and every person who supported me. Likewise to the locals who came to my aid. Community spirit is alive and well in our neck of the woods.

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