Do you need a bone density test?

As more and more people around us suffer from "reduced bone density" and "osteoporosis", people's awareness of how to judge and detect reduced bone density and prevent osteoporosis at an early stage is gradually increasing.

Indeed, decreased bone density and osteoporosis are called "silent diseases", which means they occur quietly without anyone knowing or even feeling pain. More importantly, once osteoporosis occurs, it is difficult to cure, and various methods can only be used to delay the occurrence of fractures. Therefore, the most effective way to treat osteoporosis is prevention! Prevention! Prevention! And prevention should start in the early stages, that is, prevention of possible diseases in the elderly should be carried out in the middle-aged and young people. From the schematic diagram, it can be clearly seen that the bone density curve of a person begins to decline after the age of 30. With the increase of age, especially women in menopause, due to changes in hormones, bone density will decrease rapidly. From the changes in the curve, it can also be seen that once bone density decreases, it cannot be inverted. It can be seen that early prevention is the only way, otherwise it will be too late to make up for the loss!

Who needs preventive bone density checks? Or even regular checks? The following are the groups that need to be paid special attention to:
- Menopausal women

- Middle-aged and elderly people

- People who smoke or drink a lot

- People with a family history of bone density disease

- People who work indoors for a long time and lack sunlight

- People who are deficient in vitamin D

- People who lack exercise for a long time

How to determine your bone density? Take a look at the following figure to clearly understand the "T" and "Z" values ​​in bone density testing:

- For women and middle-aged and elderly people after despair, when the T value is ≥-1.0, it indicates normal bone density; when -2.5＜T value＜-1.0, it indicates osteopenia (low bone mass); when the T value is ≤-2.5, it indicates osteoporosis.

- For premenopausal women and men under 50 years old, a Z score of ≤ -2.0 indicates that bone density is not as good as that of people of the same age.

It can be seen that people with increasing age, women before and after menopause, people with family histories, and people with unhealthy lifestyles should have regular bone density checks to detect problems in a timely manner, improve nutrition, especially supplement protein, minerals and vitamin D, increase exercise, and adjust their lifestyle.

Once again, it is important to emphasize that decreased bone density and osteoporosis must be prevented, as they are difficult to cure once symptoms appear.