This is for informational purposes only. For medical advice or diagnosis, consult a professional.

A DEXA scan measures bone density and gives you one number, the T-score. Minus 1.0 or above is normal. Minus 2.5 or below means osteoporosis.

The number in between is where most of the confusion lives, and where most of the useful action happens. MedlinePlus (2025) puts bone loss, also called osteopenia, at a T-score of -1.1 to -2.4, and osteoporosis at -2.5 or below.

The second piece of confusion is timing. Waiting until 65 is not the rule for everyone, and the current national screening advice says so plainly. The sections below cover what the scan does, how to read the result, who should be tested earlier, and what to do with a number you do not like.

A female doctor explaining DEXA scan bone density results and a T-score chart on a computer monitor to a senior female patient in a bright medical clinic.

What Does a DEXA Scan Actually Measure?

It measures how much mineral is packed into your bones, usually at the hip and lower spine, using a low dose of x-rays. The hip and spine are chosen because they are the fractures that change a person’s life, not because they are convenient.

What Happens During the Scan

MedlinePlus (2024) describes lying on your back on a padded table, usually in your own clothes, while one scanner arm passes over your hips and spine and another passes underneath. You stay very still and may be asked to hold your breath.

It is short and painless. The same page gives the usual length as 10 to 30 minutes, with results typically back within a few days. A peripheral scan of the wrist, hand, or foot takes only a few minutes, but it tells you less.

Central Versus Peripheral Scans

Not all bone density tests carry the same weight. MedlinePlus (2025) describes central DEXA, which scans the lower spine and hip, as the best predictor of hip fracture risk, while peripheral DEXA measures the wrist, fingers, leg, or heel instead.

Two practical points before you go. Remove metal items, and skip calcium supplements for 24 hours beforehand, because a supplement sitting in your gut can throw the reading off. Tell the technologist if you are or could be pregnant.

How Do You Read a T-Score?

A T-score compares your bone density against a healthy young adult, so it is a distance from a benchmark rather than a percentage. The further below zero you sit, the thinner the bone and the higher the fracture risk.

Those three bands are the whole vocabulary, and knowing them means you can read your own report before anyone explains it. The table below sets out the ranges as MedlinePlus (2025) gives them, so you can find where your own number sits.

T-score	What it means
-1.0 or above	Normal bone density. Repeat testing is based on your risk factors and your doctor's advice rather than on a fixed schedule.
-1.1 to -2.4	Bone loss, often called osteopenia. Not a diagnosis of osteoporosis, and the range where diet, exercise, and risk-factor changes do the most good.
-2.5 or below	Osteoporosis is likely. This is the range where a doctor will usually discuss prescription treatment alongside everything else.

One number is less useful than two. A score that has moved from -1.4 to -2.0 over four years tells your doctor something a single reading cannot, which is why keeping copies of your reports is worth the drawer space.

Why Your Score Is Not Your Fracture Risk

A T-score is one input, not a verdict. Age, a previous broken bone, a parent with a hip fracture, body weight, smoking, and alcohol all change the odds, which is why two people with the same score can get different advice.

That is also why asking for a formal fracture risk assessment is reasonable. It combines the scan with your history into an estimate of what might happen over the next ten years, which is a far more useful basis for a decision than one number alone.

Who Should Get a DEXA Scan Before 65?

Postmenopausal women younger than 65 who have risk factors should be screened, not only those who have reached 65. This is the point most often missed in a short appointment, and it is now explicit in the national guidance rather than being a matter of opinion.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (2025) recommends screening for osteoporosis in women 65 years or older, and also recommends screening postmenopausal women younger than 65 who are at increased risk of an osteoporotic fracture as estimated by clinical risk assessment. Both carry a B grade.

The Risk Factors That Move the Date Earlier

MedlinePlus (2025) lists the situations that justify testing younger women and men of any age: a fracture after age 50, a strong family history of osteoporosis, long-term corticosteroid use, early menopause, and long-term tobacco use or heavy alcohol use.

Early menopause deserves its own mention, because it is the one patients rarely raise themselves. Menopause before the usual age means more years without estrogen’s protective effect on bone, and that is a reason to ask about a scan rather than wait.

A well-woman visit is the natural place to raise it, because the clinician already has your menopause history in front of them. Our round-up of women’s health clinics in Pasadena covers what those visits usually include and how they differ from a general checkup.

What About Men?

The guidance is less settled here. The USPSTF (2025) concluded that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening men, which is a statement about missing evidence rather than advice against testing.

MedlinePlus (2025) notes the same disagreement in practice: some groups recommend testing men at age 70, while others say the evidence is unclear. A man with a previous fracture, long-term steroid use, or a strong family history is still worth a conversation.

Why Do Doctors Sometimes Not Order It Early?

Often because nobody asked, and because an early scan has to be justified by risk rather than by age alone. Screening guidance for under-65s depends on a clinical risk assessment, so the conversation needs your history in it.

That gives you a practical script. Say your age at menopause, any fracture after 50, any parent with a hip fracture, your smoking and drinking history, and any steroid treatment you have had. Those are the exact inputs a risk assessment uses.

Bringing it up as a question about risk rather than a request for a test usually lands better. A doctor weighing whether to order a scan is looking for the risk factors, and you are the only person in the room who knows all of them.

What Are the Symptoms of Osteoporosis?

There usually are none until a bone breaks, and that is the whole problem. Bone loss does not ache, so the first sign for many people is a wrist that breaks in a minor fall or a vertebra that gives way during ordinary lifting.

Some changes do show up over time. Losing height, a gradual stoop, or back pain that appears without an injury can all point toward spinal fractures that happened quietly. None of these is proof, and each is worth mentioning.

The timeline underneath is slow and silent. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (2023) notes that bones slowly lose calcium after about age 30, and that in middle age this loss speeds up and can lead to weak, fragile bones and broken bones.

What Can You Do About Osteopenia?

Treat the -1.1 to -2.4 range as the window where ordinary habits still change the slope. Nothing dramatic is required, and the things that help bone also happen to help balance, which matters just as much for avoiding a fracture.

Calcium: How Much, and From Where

The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (2023) recommends daily calcium as 1,000 mg for adults 19 to 50, 1,200 mg for women 51 to 70, 1,000 mg for men 51 to 70, and 1,200 mg for everyone 71 and older.

There is such a thing as too much. The same fact sheet sets the upper limit, counting food, drinks and supplements together, at 2,500 mg a day for adults 19 to 50 and 2,000 mg a day from 51 onward, and notes that some research suggests high calcium intakes might raise the risk of heart disease and prostate cancer.

The evidence on supplements is more mixed than the label suggests. The fact sheet reports that some studies found calcium supplements, with or without vitamin D, increase bone mineral density in older adults while others did not, and that whether they prevent fractures is unclear. Food first is a reasonable default.

Movement That Loads the Bone

Bone responds to load, so weight-bearing activity and resistance work do more for it than gentle movement alone. Walking, stair climbing, and anything that puts your own body weight through your legs counts toward that, and so does carrying your own shopping.

Balance is the other half of the equation, because a fracture needs a fall as well as thin bone. DizzyCare Physical Therapy works on vestibular rehabilitation across Pasadena, Arcadia, Sierra Madre and nearby areas, which is the relevant kind of help when dizziness is part of why someone is unsteady.

Our piece on simple habits that keep bones strong covers the everyday version of all of this, and the one on fall risk assessment for seniors explains what a formal balance check involves and who carries it out. Doing both is more useful than doing either one alone.

How Is Osteoporosis Treated?

Prescription treatment enters the picture mainly at -2.5 or below, or at a high calculated fracture risk, and it sits alongside the diet and movement work rather than replacing it. Which option fits depends on your history, so that is a conversation rather than a decision to make from an article.

What is worth knowing in advance is the shape of the plan. Most approaches aim to slow bone loss or support bone building, are reviewed after a set period, and are usually paired with adequate calcium and vitamin D so the treatment has the raw material to work with.

Who to See About the Result

Bone questions often sit inside a wider hormonal picture, and that is where a specialist earns their place. Irina Urusova, MD is an endocrinologist whose practice covers osteoporosis and calcium metabolism disorders alongside thyroid care and menopausal hormonal changes, which is the combination many women need to look at together.

If getting to an appointment is the obstacle, an assessment can also happen at home. A doctor who visits at home can review medications, check balance, and order tests without anyone having to manage a parking garage on a bad day.

What Does a DEXA Scan Cost?

Less than most people expect, and often nothing at all when it is ordered as preventive screening under an insurance plan. The scan is a short outpatient test rather than a procedure, and the price reflects that, but the billing code attached to it makes a real difference to what you pay.

Three questions settle it before you book. Ask whether the scan is billed as screening or as diagnostic, whether the imaging center is in your plan’s network, and what the plan requires in the way of a referral or prior authorization.

Searching for a DEXA scan near you is worth doing by facility rather than by price alone. A center that does central DEXA on the hip and spine gives a more useful result than one offering only a wrist or heel measurement, and repeat scans are best done on the same machine.

How Often Should the Scan Be Repeated?

That depends on the first result and on your risk factors rather than on a fixed calendar. A normal score in a low-risk person does not need frequent rechecking; a borderline score with several risk factors is a different conversation.

Consistency matters more than frequency. Repeating the scan at the same facility, and on the same machine where possible, makes the comparison meaningful, because small differences between machines can look like real change when nothing has actually changed.

Keep your own copy of each report with the T-score written on it. Bringing the previous number to the next appointment is the single easiest thing a patient can do to make the follow-up visit useful, and it also covers you if you change doctors.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a DEXA scan be wrong?

It can be misleading rather than wrong. Severe spinal arthritis, previous spine surgery, or metal implants can raise the reading at that site, so your doctor may rely more on the hip result.

Can a DEXA scan be wrong?

It can be misleading rather than wrong. Severe spinal arthritis, previous spine surgery, or metal implants can raise the reading at that site, so your doctor may rely more on the hip result.

Is a Z-score the same thing as a T-score?

No. A Z-score compares you with people your own age rather than with a young adult, and it is used mainly for younger adults, premenopausal women, and children.

Should I stop my calcium supplement before the scan?

Skip it for 24 hours beforehand, as MedlinePlus advises, because a supplement passing through the gut can affect the reading. Resume it afterward unless your doctor says otherwise.

Do I need a specialist, or can my primary care doctor order this?

A primary care doctor can order the scan and interpret a straightforward result. A specialist is more useful when the result is unexpected, when other hormone problems are in play, or when treatment decisions are complicated.

Does losing weight affect bone density?

It can, because lower body weight is itself a risk factor for low bone density. Mention any significant unintentional weight loss when you discuss screening, since it may change the timing.

Sources Used

Bone Density Scan – MedlinePlus (2024)

Bone mineral density test – MedlinePlus (2025)

Calcium – NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (2023)

Osteoporosis to Prevent Fractures: Screening – U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (2025)

Osteoporosis and the DEXA Scan: Protecting Bones After Menopause