If you suffer from osteoporosis, there’s a good chance that you also have heart disease, and now researchers are finding out why.

Osteoporosis is the bone-thinning disease that occurs with aging, and tends to occur more often in women.

Ten million people have osteoporosis in the U.S., and 18 million more are at risk of developing the disease.

About three-quarters of those with osteoporosis are women, but the condition can occur in men as well.

Researchers at the University of Southampton, in England, were among the first to use a special scanning technique to analyze the wrist bones of 350 men and women ages 70 to 85.

They discovered that people with a history of cardiac problems, including coronary heart disease, angina, heart attack, and heart failure had lower wrist bone density than those who did not, and therefore were at greater risk of developing osteoporosis.

This occurred more often in the study’s male subjects.

So if you do have heart disease, a bone density scan might be in order, especially if you have other risks for osteoporosis.

Other risk factors for osteoporosis include being a woman (especially if menopausal), being Caucasian or Asian, having a history of the disease in your family, and being small-framed.