“Osteopenia” is not a word I’d ever heard three months ago. And then, just like that, it was everywhere—on the results of my first bone-density, or DEXA, scan, and on the lips of most of the friends of a certain age who, when I mentioned the diagnosis, responded with, “I have that, too!”
Turns out that low bone density, by which osteopenia is interchangeably referred, is pretty common: An estimated 40 million Americans have the condition, with about one-third of adults older than 50 having some degree of bone density loss.
