At Body
Composition Queensland, we offer a state of the art service for those
who are serious about improving their health, getting into shape and
staying there.
This scan is for 3 main groups of people:
1. Professional and recreational athletes,
bodybuilders
2. Personal training clients – those
monitoring their fitness programs
3. Weight Loss Patients
Whether you are an athlete monitoring your
training or an everyday person trying to lose weight, Duel Energy X-ray
Absorptiometry (DEXA) is a valuable tool to structure your exercise and
dietary program.
By understanding how your muscle, fat, and
bone react to lifestyle changes, you’ll be able to improve weight loss,
create a highly targeted exercise program, and reduce your chance of
heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. So how does
it work?
A DEXA whole body composition scan measures
body fat, bone and lean mass to a very high degree of accuracy and
precision. This allows small changes in fat and lean/muscle tissue to be
detected over relatively short timeframes, which makes it ideal for
tracking the progress of your program. You will also be able to see
changes in individual regions of the arms, legs and trunk as well as
the whole body.
The scan also gives you your overall fat
percentage. This will indicate whether you are in a healthy range for
your age.
Right-click here to download a
sample report - pdf (510KB)
At Body Composition Queensland we use a
Hologic Discovery densitometer.
DEXA works by passing a fine, very low dose
x-ray beam through the tissues of the body to a detector array.
These x-rays are blocked or attenuated
relative to the density of the tissues they are penetrating. Bone, fat
and lean(muscle) tissue all have characteristic densities which can be
used to calculate the relative masses of each of the three components
in any given region.
Undergoing a full body DEXA scan is as simple
as lying on a table for around 3 minutes. You stay fully clothed
throughout the process, and the non-invasive scan is completely pain
free.
The use and safety of DEXA is well proven.
More than 70% of pharmaceutical clinical trials currently utilise DEXA
technology, while DEXA body composition assessment is proving highly
beneficial in advanced clinical weight loss trials. To date, over 2000
research papers have used DEXA for body composition assessment
purposes. DEXA results are also commonly used to show intermediate
outcomes in many Nutrition and Metabolic Disorder studies. This
widespread acceptance has helped DEXA technology achieve a gold
standard for ease of use, accuracy and test/ retest repeatability.
DEXA is significantly more accurate than
underwater weighing, Bodpod, bioelectrical impedance and skinfold(calipers) measure.
What about BMI
(body mass index) - is it accurate?
| Click
on the image
for the answer - you might be surprised!
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IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
If you’re on an exercise program, be
consistent between scans. That way you will know if your particular
program works for you or if it needs some adjusting.
For the most accurate comparison, follow the
same diet and exercise routine over the 24 hours before any progress
scans.
Please note: Long periods of fasting before
your scan causes glycogen levels in your muscles to decrease, causing
muscle mass to decrease.
Therefore it is recommended to eat at standard meal times.
