epiphyseal

Your bones help you move, give you shape and support your body. They are living tissues that rebuild constantly throughout your life. During childhood and your teens, your body adds new bone faster than it removes old bone. After about age 20, you can lose bone faster than you make bone. To have strong bones when you are young, and to prevent bone loss when you are older, you need to get enough calcium, vitamin D, and exercise. You should also avoid smoking and drinking too much alcohol.

Bone diseases can make bones easy to break. Different kinds of bone problems include:

• Low bone density and osteoporosis, which make your bones weak and more likely to break
• Osteogenesis imperfecta makes your bones brittle
• Paget's disease of bone makes them weak
• Bones can also develop cancer and infections
• Other bone diseases, which are caused by poor nutrition, genetics, or problems with the rate of bone growth or rebuilding

NIH: National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases

Your connective tissue supports many different parts of your body, such as your skin, eyes, and heart. It is like a "cellular glue" that gives your body parts their shape and helps keep them strong. It also helps some of your tissues do their work. It is made of many kinds of proteins. Cartilage and fat are types of connective tissue.

Over 200 disorders that impact connective tissue. There are different types:

• Genetic disorders, such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Marfan syndrome, and osteogenesis imperfecta
• Autoimmune disorders, such as lupus and scleroderma
• Cancers, like some types of soft tissue sarcoma

Each disorder has its own symptoms and needs different treatment.

NIH: National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases

Genes are the building blocks of heredity. They are passed from parent to child. They hold DNA, the instructions for making proteins. Proteins do most of the work in cells. They move molecules from one place to another, build structures, break down toxins, and do many other maintenance jobs.

Sometimes there is a mutation, a change in a gene or genes. The mutation changes the gene's instructions for making a protein, so the protein does not work properly or is missing entirely. This can cause a medical condition called a genetic disorder.

You can inherit a gene mutation from one or both parents. A mutation can also happen during your lifetime.

There are three types of genetic disorders:

• Single-gene disorders, where a mutation affects one gene. Sickle cell anemia is an example.
• Chromosomal disorders, where chromosomes (or parts of chromosomes) are missing or changed. Chromosomes are the structures that hold our genes. Down syndrome is a chromosomal disorder.
• Complex disorders, where there are mutations in two or more genes. Often your lifestyle and environment also play a role. Colon cancer is an example.

Genetic tests on blood and other tissue can identify genetic disorders.

NIH: National Library of Medicine