I took generic Fosamax for about 2 1/2 years, but switched to Reclast in late Feb. The positive aspect is that it will probably increase my bone density by as much as 20% in 2 years, the negative aspect is that the bone that doesn't get destroyed because of the medication is probably weaker than average. From what I saw, there's no osteoporosis medication that's ideal. The same can be said for virtually any disease.

I recently found an osteoporosis clinic in my area, and had a long and informative appointment with one of the specialists. He ordered all kinds of blood tests and a 24 hour urine to rule out more unusual, but treatable, causes of osteoporosis, but established that I just have regular garden variety osteoporosis. If there's an osteoporosis clinic near you, I'd highly recommend it, if for no other reason than to get a well-informed opinion about what your best option is, which could be different than mine. One of the blood tests that I think will be part of my annual appointments is collagen type I cross linked-telopeptide (CTX), a marker of bone resorption/loss, which can be used to monitor the efficiency of osteoporosis treatment in addition to biannual bone density tests. The bad part about the consult was that the osteoporosis specialist I saw is an endocrinologist, and he found nodules on my thyroid, which is true for about half of people more than 60 years old. This led to a thyroid ultrasound, which led to a fine needle aspiration biopsy, which turned out to be atypical. Now I'm awaiting results of genetic testing from the biopsy to see if there are genetic changes that indicate an increased risk for cancer or if the nodule is likely to not become malignant. If the results are bad, at least thyroid cancer is very treatable, so I'm not very worried.