Shannon Medical Center | Health Beat | Winter 2020

Winter 2020 7 Wellness I ndividuals looking to gain a better understanding of how their body works now have the ability to get a BodyLogic Scan at the Shannon Imaging Center. With just one short x-ray scan from the DXA unit, BodyLogic creates an Advanced Body Composition assessment that measures the three main tissues in your body: fat, lean muscle mass and bone. An Advanced Body Composition assessment can be beneficial for numerous reasons, such as tracking the progress of physical therapy, a weight manage- ment program or athletic training. HOW IT WORKS “We’re so happy to have the BodyLogic Scan here,” says Radiologist Michelle Snuggs. “It’s actually an additional scan that we perform on our DXA ma- chine, which we have been doing for years.The old scan only measured bone mass density—how thick and how strong your bones are.The BodyLogic Scan, besides imaging from head to toe, measures your per- cent body fat. It gives you a true BMI, or Body Mass Index, and looks at your total lean muscle mass.” Located at the Shannon Imaging Center, the DXA machine takes about 7–8 minutes to perform a BodyLogic scan and 10 minutes to create a full- color, detailed report.These results are immediately available to take home, as well as keep stored in your medical records for a physician to review. “You don’t have to wait for your primary care doctor, coach or trainer to give you your results— you can actually walk home with them,” Snuggs says. “You have the numbers, but you also have a color-coordinated body scan that tells you what color is the fat, what color is the muscle and what color is the bone. It’s very easy to read.” HOW IT CAN HELP YOU “It’s very, very interesting in the fact that you can use this as a tool for many different things in the health care world,” Snuggs says. “The physical therapist and/or a primary care doctor or orthopedic surgeon can use these scans to figure out whether they’re actually building more muscle, or if they need to tailor their training or their therapy to tar- get more specific muscle groups.” The BodyLogic Scan is also helpful in showing how a patient’s physical therapy is progressing over time. Patients in therapy after surgery, or even after a stroke, can see visual representations of their mus- cular function and improvement. “The scan actually will look at the percent body fat and your lean muscle mass,” says Snuggs. “But one of the really neat things that it does is compare sides and visualize how one extremity looks com- pared to the other side. Maybe you’ve had a fracture on the left extremity, and your muscles have shrunk down and you need to build them; you can actually look at how the left leg compares to the right leg and go from there.” Athletes looking to create a training and nutri- tion program will find the data collected from the scan beneficial, as it will give them more insight into the way their body behaves. Data for each area of the body is broken down into easy-to-read visu- als on the Advanced Body Composition assessment that shows the individual how their muscles are reacting to their training. “Coaches, whether it’s at the high school or col- lege level, can send their athletes over here to see how they are progressing with certain training that they may be doing,” Snuggs says. “Personal trainers or fitness coaches can send individuals here to see if their workouts are meeting specific goals.” And individuals who are on a diet or weight-loss program can now see where, specifically, on their body they are gaining or losing body fat and gaining muscle. Dietitians can utilize the data to work with patients with diabetes to balance their weight-loss and medication needs. HOW TO GET YOURS The BodyLogic Scan is available to anyone in the community, and can be utilized as often as needed. Although you do not need a referral, your primary care doctor or other physician can call and make an appointment for you. “Typically we will obtain a baseline scan so we know what our numbers are when we start the pro- cess,” Snuggs said. “Then, depending on what your doctor, physical therapist and/or trainer wants to do, you may want to get another scan once a month, every 6 weeks, every 6 months—just depending on what the training and/or therapy may entail.” Getting a different view The scan and report are $75 per visit. For more information, or to schedule an appointment, contact the Shannon Imaging Center at 325-481-2339 . UNHEALTHY Examples: Shortening, stick margarine and some fried foods. Avoid. HEALTHY Examples: Avocado, canola oil, nuts, olive oil and peanut butter. Enjoy in moderation. HEALTHY Examples: Corn oil, sesame oil, sunflower seeds and fatty fish like salmon and trout. Enjoy in moderation. UNHEALTHY Examples: Coconut oil, fatty meats, and whole or 2 percent dairy foods. Limit. MONOUNSATURATED POLYUNSATURATED SATURATED TRANS FATS KNOW YOUR THE BOTTOM LINE: Replace unhealthy fats with healthier options. FATS Sources: Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics; American Heart Association