As a Physical Therapist for the military, body composition is something we must continuously monitor as soldiers are expected to maintain height/weight standards even while recovering from an injury. For this reason, it has become commonplace in my physical therapy practice to utilize this data during the rehab process.

Aside from simply maintaining height/weight standards I actually find body composition monitoring and discussions to be very beneficial to the recovery process. In this article, I will share with you how and why I use this data during the recovery process. 

*This article contains affiliate links which means if you purchase from these links I make a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, I appreciate your support. 

First of all I like to get an idea of the patients current training goals. Are they wanting to lose weight? Drop body fat? Increase muscle mass? Get stronger? Get faster? Get overall healthier? What I find is that many people don't actually understand what they want. I use this information to gauge their mindset and knowledge about body composition. Sometimes this warrants a referral to a sports dietician but at minimum we can then chat about how body composition will affect their personal health goals as well as the goals for rehab. 

During the injury recovery process, physical activity is often heavily modified and also likely reduced. Nutritional intake must then become the priority for maintaining and improving body composition. While these goals will be slightly different for everyone, generally speaking we want to minimize fat gain and maintain or increase lean muscle mass. 

This becomes particularly important after a significant injury or surgery that requires heavily reduced or modified physical activity. With movement decreased focus must shift to nutritional intake to maintain body composition. I find that doing regular scanning and having these conversations helps sets expectations and then determines what additional resources ( such as referral to dietician) the patient may need to meet these goals. 

 I also like to use body composition scanning to monitor limb symmetry. After significant injury/surgery we often will see a pretty marked reduction in lean muscle mass in affected limb compared to the other side. We can monitor that over time and expect to find improvements in limb symmetry once we get to the strength training phase of rehab. 

Where to scan?

DEXA scans are considered to be the most accurate body composition scanner. Most larger cities will have a clinic that offers DEXA scanning at a price ranging from $35-50. 

Many physical therapy clinics such as mine will have a different type of medical grade scanner such as an In Body. These use electrical impedance to scan the body and while not quite as accurate as DEXA scanning they are still considered to be very accurate and reliable. 

In home body composition scanners are something that are more recently hitting the market. Hume Health sent me their Body Pod scanner about 6 months ago to test out. I was skeptical of their claims of 98% accuracy so I decided to run my own little experiment for several months comparing results from my scans in the clinic on the In Body to the results at home using the Hume Health Body Pod. 

I was actually really impressed. 

My percent body fat was consistently within 0.5%. My lean body mass and limb symmetry statistics were nearly identical. The largest discrepancy that I found was the visceral fat index which essentially measures how much fat is around your abdominal organs. 

Overall for the price and convenience of being able to scan regularly at home, I think this is a great option. 

You can shop the Body Pod using this affiliate LINK. My code DOCMRAZ saves an extra 15%. 

As always, feel free to reach out to me with any questions. 

Yours in health, 

-Jamie