The human body is composed of different elements. Water, calcium, phosphorus, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon for the most part. All of them form a diversity of tissues and organs that perform a specific function in our body.

Water is the most abundant element, which constitutes between 50 and 65 percent of the weight of the body and is the main element that forms the predominant masses in our body:

Lean tissue mass or fat-free mass (FFM), which under normal conditions accounts for about 80% of our weight. It includes all the functional components of the organism involved in metabolically active processes. That is why nutritional requirements are generally related to the size of this mass, hence the importance of knowing it.

Its content is very heterogeneous and includes: bones, muscles, extracellular water, nervous tissue and all other cells that are not adipocytes or fat cells.

Muscle or skeletal muscle mass, which accounts for about 40% of total weight, is the most important component of the FFM and is a reflection of the nutritional status of the protein.

Bone mass, the mass that forms the bones, constitutes about 14% of the total weight and 18% of the FFM.

Finally, the fat mass or adipose tissue (20%) is made up of adipocytes. Fat, which for practical purposes is considered metabolically inactive, has an important reserve role in hormone metabolism. According to its location, we differentiate it into:

Subcutaneous fat (under the skin, where the major stores are located)

Internal or visceral fat. According to its functions in the body, it can also be divided into essential and storage fat

Why is it important to have a body composition scan?

The health of a person is closely related to his body composition. If the presence of the fat part is excessive we can, in the medium and long term, suffer pathologies of the metabolic system directly and indirectly suffer numerous diseases derived from an excess of fat that could condition the correct functioning of different organs.

For this reason it is very important, not only to control the overall body weight, but to go a step further and determine what percentage of the total weight corresponds to fat tissue and what percentage corresponds to muscle tissue.

What does the test consist of?

Thanks to a sophisticated system of myographic electrical impedance, in Ergodynamics Clinic we can distinguish the characteristics of muscle and fat tissue of a total of 24 muscles of our body. For each one of them, we can know its muscular quality and the percentage of fat mass that composes it.

It is important to know the adequate levels of muscle mass and the limits of adipose tissue or fat tissue present in our body. Numerous studies confirm that a fat percentage of between 12%-15% for men and 15%-19% for women can be considered adequate and healthy. In athletes, these percentages are lower in order to guarantee the athlete’s maximum performance.

Indicators such as BMI (body mass index) that are based on weight and height parameters are not reliable enough to determine our real fitness.

Often, we find patients who, when analyzed with this type of indicators, would be normal or within what is considered normal in terms of health, but if we study in more depth the relationship between their muscle quality and the percentage of fat mass, we get the values of a subject with strong muscular limits and a high percentage of fat.

Who is the body composition study aimed at?

ATHLETES

Athletes who want to know their fitness level and their distribution of muscle tissue and fat mass in the body

Athletes who want to monitor the evolution of their fat tissue and muscle tissue throughout the season

Athletes who want to know the muscle symmetries and asymmetries of the right and left sides and of the anterior and posterior muscle chains

Athletes who want to recover from an injury and balance the musculature of the area weakened by the injury with the antagonist area of their body

NON ATHLETES

People who want to reduce their fat mass percentage

People who want to increase their muscle tone

People who want to reduce body weight

People who want to improve their health status through a correct ratio between fat mass and muscle mass