How Integrative Medicine Can Benefit from Comprehensive Body Scanning Technology
If you’re an integrative medical doctor, you understand the importance of treating the whole person and not just individual symptoms. You also know that there’s more than one way to do this and that sometimes it takes a little bit of everything to get patients feeling their best. One tool you may have overlooked is full-dimensional body scanning technology. This technology can help you measure your patient’s progress in 6 different categories over time and make sure they’re getting the most out of their treatment plan. Here’s how the analysis was previously done, the evolution of new technology, and why the new technology is so valuable for integrative medical doctors.
Basic Body Composition Analysis
Living a healthy lifestyle means adopting habits that will keep body fat, body mass, and body water in check. Healthy body composition is associated with a reduced risk of disease and good quality of life. Doctors who want to make sure their patients are healthy over time use basic body composition analysis methods as a way to track changes in body weight, body fat percentage, and body water percentage.
How It Works
A basic method for measuring body composition requires measuring the height and weight of the patient as well as calculating his or her body mass index (BMI). Typically, lean body mass (LBM) and fat mass (FM) can be calculated easily as well. Together, these components help doctors determine whether body fat is the primary problem or if body composition could be improved by increasing body water at a high level.
Early Stages of Body Composition Analysis Technology
There are three basic body composition analysis technologies that integrative medicine doctors may have used previously:
Hydrostatic weighing (underwater weighing) – To perform underwater weighing, a subject’s body is submerged in a tank of water. The body displaces an amount of water equal to its weight. Then, by knowing how much air the body displaced and its dry weight, we can calculate body density and percent body fat.
Air displacement plethysmography – this method makes use of air-displacing equipment to measure body volume and mass through the displacement of air.
Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) – With this method, body composition is assessed through body fat that contains body water. Electrical waves are passed through the body to measure its resistance to the flow of electricity.
New Comprehensive Scanning Technology
Visbody combines Instant Body Scan (IBS) and BIA technologies to give you the most comprehensive scan that is available. In about 40 seconds, this scanner is able to conduct an in-depth body composition analysis, posture assessment, and shoulder function assessment, while also building a highly accurate 3D avatar of your body with highly accurate measurements.
Why It's Helpful for Your Clinical Practice
Measuring body composition in a comprehensive way using Visbody provides valuable information about your patient’s progress over time. Tracking BMI can show you if they are getting healthier or not, but BIA + IBS technology provides a lot more information on how healthy they are becoming. Here are some examples of why body composition analysis can benefit integrative medical practice:
It shows you where patients have lost or gained weight
This can help doctors monitor changes in lean mass and identify areas that need more attention. For example, increased body water percentage could indicate that they are retaining fluid because their body is too acidic; decreased body water percentage could indicate inadequate hydration.
It can help with body fat percentage goals
With 3D Avatars and in-depth body composition analysis, you can set body fat percentage goals for your patients and track their progress toward those goals. You may find that a patient has a very high amount of body fat despite losing weight. This data provides the basis for a discussion on lifestyle changes needed to improve body composition. You can also provide a visual of their changes over time using their 3D avatar.
It can help with eating disorder patients
the technology allows measuring body composition without physical contact with the patient, which is helpful when dealing with sensitive or stigmatized topics such as eating disorders.
Additionally, it delivers reliable measurements, analysis, and results, which will make your patients feel confident about the information you’re providing them.
It reveals whether weight loss programs are working
Tracking body composition over time can help monitor the effectiveness of various treatments. For example, body fat percentage may increase if treatment isn’t effective; conversely, body fat percentage may decrease if the patient is successfully following a scientific program that Visbody helped you create based on data. With this information, doctors can make adjustments to their patient’s treatment plans as they go along.
Ditch the normal scales!
Bodyweight scales don’t differentiate between body fat and body water, whereas Visbody does. It’s important to know the difference because body fat is what can cause serious health problems, while body water isn’t always a bad thing. Your patients are better off having more body water than excess body fat.
Scales also don’t show where your patient’s body fat or body water is located on their bodies. Visbody uses algorithms to provide your patients with data about their locations of highest adiposity (areas in which they’re likely to store fat).
When you use Visbody, you’ll be able to see how body fat changes from body part to body part. For example, a woman may have a normal BMI but high measurements in the triceps area suggest she has excess body fat.
Finally, body weight scales only reveal body mass index – BMI does not provide information about body fat or body water levels that can affect overall health and wellness.