When we need to lose weight to improve our health, we usually focus on fat loss and lowering our BMI. But doctors are now adapting a new approach to tackling weight loss that looks our body’s composition internally.
By taking into account whole body composition analysis of our fat, bone and muscle mass, doctors can understand how each is responding to lifestyle changes we make. This can improve weight loss results, allow exercise programs to be tailored to give best results, and reduce the risk of conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
Body Mass Index (BMI) vs DEXA scan
When using Body Mass Index (BMI) to assess your overall health, the calculation only looks at weight and height. The measurement can often be misleading, and doesn’t take muscle mass into consideration.
Experts are now increasingly using body composition analysis to assess wellness and the DEXA scan is the most accurate tool for this. Originally developed to measure bone density and diagnosing osteoporosis, in recent years the DEXA scan has been used to give a detailed look at body composition; fat, muscle and bone. The results are extremely accurate and are now being used to assess overall good health.
How does a DEXA scan work?
DEXA stands for dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and it involves the use of a medical X-ray machine. Very low dose X-ray beams pass over your entire body, and the results allow doctors to see exactly what your body is made up of.
The DEXA scan can be performed in minutes and the immediately available results give a precise indication of your body fat, including internal visceral fat, muscle mass and bone density. It gives a degree of information that can’t be provided by other techniques.
Why is assessing your body composition important?
Doctors are now beginning to understand the importance of being able to get accurate information on your body composition to assess overall health, fitness and wellness. Professional athletes and body builders have been using the technique for many years. It not only allows them to track their weight loss and muscle build-up on a regular basis, but it can give asymmetry measurements of each side of the body, allowing them to understand exactly how muscle and fat mass is distributed and tailor their training programs accordingly. But doctors soon discovered it was also a useful toolto track long-term health.
Long term health benefits of DEXA scanning
By providing a better understanding of what our body composition, the DEXA scan allows doctors to identify possible health risks before they become an issue. It can assess the health of your bones and whether you are at risk of osteoporosis or fractures. It can also measure visceral fat, a type of fat that surrounds our internal organs. This fat is associated with inflammation and cardiometabolic diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and many more.