How To Measure Muscle Mass Accurately
Having a healthy amount of muscle mass is essential for your health and well-being. Unfortunately, though, stepping on a scale doesn’t indicate how much muscle mass you have.
Let’s explore the benefits of maintaining a healthy level of muscle mass and how to measure muscle mass accurately.
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Why Is Muscle Mass Important for Overall Health?
A healthy amount of muscle mass is crucial for your overall health. The benefits of maintaining a healthy amount of muscle mass include:
- Better balance and mobility, which can help prevent falls as you age
- Improves posture
- Increased stamina
- Increases bone density
- Maintaining flexibility
- Manage pain
- Preventing joint injuries
A healthy amount of muscle mass can also help you prevent chronic conditions such as:
- Arthritis
- Diabetes
- Heart disease
If you have one of these chronic conditions, increasing your muscle mass can help reduce or manage your condition.
Tracking muscle mass offers the following health benefits:
- Improving your fitness because you can adjust your exercise routines to target areas where you need more muscle.
- Maintaining a healthy amount of muscle mass to have good balance, prevent injuries, and manage chronic health conditions.
- Promotes weight loss because it ensures you build enough muscle to maintain your metabolism, which helps with weight loss.
It’s also possible that maintaining a healthy amount of muscle mass can help prevent cognitive decline.
Why Doesn’t the Scale Accurately Measure Muscle Gain or Fat Loss?
Stepping on a scale only reveals your body weight. Scales do not provide detailed information about your body composition because they cannot distinguish between body parts. Consequently, scales cannot accurately indicate whether you’ve gained muscle or lost fat.
What Are the Different Ways To Measure Muscle Mass?
Ways to measure muscle mass include:
- Bioimpedance analysis
- Computed tomography (CT)
- D3-creatinine dilution
- Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA)
- Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
- Ultrasound
Imaging tests are considered the most effective way to measure muscle mass.
How Accurate Are BMI, Body Fat Scales, Tape Measurements, and Skinfold Testing?
Body mass index (BMI) testing does not measure how much muscle you have. It compares your weight and height. Your BMI score is then used to determine whether you’re a healthy weight or obese.
Body fat scales send an electrical current through your body and calculate the resistance to it to determine how much muscle and fat you have. Your hydration levels affect the accuracy, so it isn’t as reliable as a DEXA scan.
Tape measurements can indicate whether you’ve lost fat or gained muscle over a period of time. However, they do not indicate how much muscle mass you have, but they can indicate lean muscle gain if your arms and chest increase in circumference. Additionally, if your waist and thigh circumferences decrease, it indicates fat loss.
Skinfold testing measures how much of your body composition is fat and isn’t considered very accurate.
What Information Does a DEXA Body Composition Scan Provide?
A DEXA scan provides detailed data about how much muscle mass you have in different regions of your body. It’s the most accurate way to measure your body fat percentage. It also identifies how much visceral fat you have and your muscle-to-fat ratio in your limbs.
Measuring Body Composition: Why Is a DEXA Scan Considered One of the Most Accurate Methods?
A DEXA scan is a non-invasive scan that accurately measures the following:
- Bone density
- Fat mass and amount of visceral fat vs. subcutaneous fat
- Lean muscle mass
It also identifies the distribution of your fat and muscle.
DEXA scans are the most accurate way to obtain detailed information about your body composition, which can be used to identify health risks.
Who Benefits Most From Tracking Muscle Mass?
Everyone who tracks their muscle mass benefits from this information as it can be used to build muscle where it’s needed, helping prevent injuries.
However, there are specific benefits for people in the following groups who track their muscle mass:
- Athletes: Professional athletes use this information to adjust their diet and training.
- Older adults: Loss of muscle mass can impair balance, increasing the risk of falls and bone fractures. Older adults can adjust their exercise routines to prevent muscle loss as they age, decreasing their risk of falls and bone fractures.
- People who take weight loss medications: Individuals taking weight loss medications may lose muscle. Tracking muscle mass helps people identify muscle loss and take steps to rebuild it, which is important because your metabolism decreases as you lose muscle mass.
- People who have diabetes and heart disease or are at risk of developing these chronic health conditions: These individuals can use muscle mass monitoring to adjust their exercise routines. Maintaining a healthy amount of muscle can help them manage their condition.
How Often Should Muscle Mass Be Measured?
How often you measure your muscle mass depends on your goals and the method used. You can use a tape measure at home every 14 to 28 days.
However, suppose you’re focusing on rapid weight loss. You would need a DEXA scan every few months to determine whether you’re losing too much muscle, so you can adjust your strength training routine to rebuild it.
Athletes may need a DEXA scan every two to three months as well.
DEXA Scans at Preventative Diagnostic Center
At Preventative Diagnostic Center in Las Vegas, we know how to accurately measure muscle mass with a DEXA Scan. With our non-invasive scan, you’ll receive detailed information about your body composition that you can use to improve or maintain your health. Contact us to learn more about these non-invasive scans.