Body Composition Analysis - What It Is and Why It’s Important

Women's Health and AgingMen's Health and AgingWeight Loss
Written By katherine kass

Unlike your bathroom scale, body composition analysis can tell you what percentage of your total body weight comes from fat, muscle, and bone - providing a much more accurate measurement of your overall health and fitness levels. You may have heard of BMI - which measures your weight against your height. But this can be very deceiving - for instance, people with more muscle mass can show up in the “obese” category on the BMI scale. In addition to being more accurate, body composition analysis can do a much better job of assessing trends over time as well as be more reflective of an individual’s diet and exercise efforts.

WAYS TO MEASURE BODY COMPOSITION

  • BIA (Bioimpedance analysis) - BIA is a medically validated body composition measurement tool that is quick and non-invasive. This approach uses a small amount of electrical current that travels through the body, measuring resistance.  BIA technology provides a report on muscle mass, fat mass, visceral fat (fat around the organs) and reports the breakdown for each limb and torso. The use of BIA is clinically helpful for the management of diabetes, cardiac care, malnutrition, sports medicine and in overweight and obese patients. Our clinic selected a hospital-grade BIA machine made by SECA.

  • DXA/DEXA Scan - The DXA Scan uses x-ray technology to look at the density of the body and can assess the amount of muscle mass and fat tissue. Historically, this has been the most accurate tool for measuring body composition - however newer BIA machines have been proven to be equally accurate without the radiation exposure. Additionally, DXA scans do not measure visceral fat. In independent studies - DXA and BIA showed similarly accurate results.

  • Skin-Fold Test - one of the oldest ways of measuring body composition, a skinfold caliper is used to assess the skinfold thickness, so that a prediction of the total amount of body fat can be made. This method hypothesizes that body fat is equally distributed over the body and that the thickness of the skinfold is a measure for subcutaneous fat. This is no longer considered to be the most accurate measure - there is a lot of room for user error. Additionally, having your skin prodded and pinched isn’t terribly pleasant. 

  • Hydrostatic - during this test, the patient is submerged under water while sitting on a scale. The administrator compares your land weight with your under-water weight. This method also does not measure visceral fat.

  • Quantitative MRI (Q-MRI) - CTs and MRI machines can technically be used for body composition analysis. While they can assess for fat and skeletal muscle mass, they are exceedingly expensive and not used in an outpatient clinical setting. 

In our office, we use body composition analysis to assist with weight loss programs, cardiometabolic health, and diabetes as well as assessing and tracking benefits of hormone replacement therapy in men and women. Please contact our office if you are interested in body composition analysis.

 

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