Nowadays, a nutritional consultation is inconceivable without having a thorough knowledge of the body composition of the patients.
The history of body composition has its beginnings in ancient Egypt, and has been written about extensively throughout history. Take Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man, for example.
While the common use of BMI or Body Mass Index may serve as an initial approximation of a population group, and is therefore widely used by governments and insurance companies, it does not mean a complete understanding of an individual patient.
In recent years, the techniques for studying the composition of the elements that make up the human body have improved and have gone from having expensive and sophisticated equipment, only suitable for use in clinical research, to equipment that can be used in a professional office and that with a proper procedure can be more than useful in the office.
It is not only useful to know the fat mass of a patient, but also the muscle mass. It also adds data on the quality of the muscle cells, (phase angle). It allows us to adequately propose the treatment of diet and physical exercises with clearly determined objectives.
Whether in obesity or fat mass increase with normal weight, underweight, sport, adolescence, etc. The finished study of lean mass and fat mass together with total body water, intra and extracellular water, in a punctual measurement or in the form of comparative follow-up, focuses us on the patient’s needs.
Our team has been using the Multifrequency Bioimpedance test for more than 10 years with excellent results, some of which have been presented in congresses of the specialty.
