I took fosamax for about a year. I have bilateral hip replacements and my jaws are in very bad shape from childhood abuse. I have had to have surgery on my jaws. The fosamax caused both my jaws and my hips to hurt. I quit taking it. I did research and found those drugs reportedly work by not allowing your body to get rid of old bone (usually it would come out in urine). Instead, the old bone hangs around and makes your real bone look bigger - more substantial. The minute you stop taking the drugs, you pee out all that dead bone and so you are back to having fragile, brittle bones. The side effects, especially osteonecrosis, just aren't worth it. After talking to several women who took drugs like Reclast, Prolia and Fosamax (who now have osteonecrosis very bad), I decided to try supplements and an estrogen patch instead. Your doctor would have to prescribe the estrogen - and your family history and your own medical history will determine if that is safe for you. I wear a 0.025 mg patch and then every other month I take progesterone. You only need 60% of the patch to be effective. For supplements, I am taking calcium to make up for what I cannot get from food, magnesium, vitamins D3 and K2 (mk4, mk7), collagen peptides in my tea, and boron (3 mg capsules - I take two capsules with breakfast, lunch, dinner and before bed). Vitamin K2 (mk4, mk7) has been shown to make modest improvements with osteoporosis. Boron is the heavy hitter. It also got rid of ALL my arthritis pain (both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis), as well as fibromyalgia pain. Doctors don't seem to know anything about boron. You can find a video by Dr. Jorge Fleches on You Tube. He had osteoporosis and started taking boron for it - and he had great success. It is a very very inexpensive supplement. Do your own research, talk to your doctor, and see what you think. I will post my DEXA scan results as soon as the pandemic is over - I have NO immune system so my doctor wants me to wait to get the scan,. My last scan revealed a -5.7 score which is NOT GOOD. I have finally stopped fracturing - so something is working.