New Tool to Maintain Healthier Lifestyles

With the new year, many of us reaffirm our commitment to getting in shape, losing weight and making changes for a healthier lifestyle. However, after a few months of dieting and working out, we become discouraged if we don’t see significant results. How do we know we’re moving in the right direction?

Elkhart General Hospital now has an advanced tool that will accurately analyze and display body composition. Those of us who are working diligently will be able to see muscle replacing fat, regardless of what our scale says. The technology is called dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and it is the latest and most accurate means of determining body composition. Elkhart General’s Lunar iDXA machine analyzes bone density and the body’s lean muscle in relation to fatty tissue. The resulting information can help guide patients to better lifestyle management.

“The DXA scan offers patients more meaningful feedback than their body weight alone,” says Genevieve Lankowicz, MD, CCD, Medical Director, Elkhart General Hospital Regional Center for Bone Health. “The technology illustrates changes in body fat and lean muscle on easy-to-read graphs and charts.”

A DXA scan is quick and painless and does not require patients to be enclosed by the equipment. The individual being scanned simply lies on a table while an arm passes over the length of the body. This arm contains an x-ray detector that collects information and generates an image of the body. The full scan takes about 10 minutes and the amount of radiation exposure is extremely small. In fact, a patient would have to have approximately 800 full-body DXA scans to equal the same amount of radiation received from one standard chest x-ray.

In addition to showing muscle versus fatty tissue in the body, the DXA scan offers reference data for the patient’s:

• Height
• Weight
• Resting metabolic rate
• Hot spots for fat distribution
• Body mass index (BMI)
• Percentage of body fat vs. lean muscle

Fat distribution is important because it can predict a person’s risk for certain diseases. Individuals with a greater amount of abdominal fat are at higher risk for high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease and diabetes.

“Elkhart General Hospital is the only facility in the area to offer this superior technology,” says Dr. Lankowicz. “We believe it is a significant investment in the health and wellness of our community, and we think it will be very motivating for people to be able to see the dramatic changes that can occur after only a few months of working on a healthier lifestyle.”

For more information about DXA body composition analysis, please call (574) 523-2751, option 6.