Second only to nutritional changes, exercise is the most powerful way to optimize your body composition. But various types of workouts may influence your body composition in different ways. Depending on the type of exercise, physical activity can help you build muscle, burn fat, or both.

Vitamin D is needed to absorb, build, and maintain strong, healthy bones. It’s also vital to cell growth and blood sugar regulation and assists in the functioning of muscles, nerves, and the immune system. Unfortunately, nearly half of American adults don’t get enough of the “sunshine hormone.”

Carbo-loading is a strategy that involves packing your diet full of carbohydrates in an effort to maximize glycogen stores, your body’s primary form of energy. The technique has long been utilized by athletes before a big game, race, or competition—but it turns out carbo-loading may actually do most of us more harm than good.

The natural process of aging results in changes that can significantly affect your health, wellness and body composition —like less muscle tone, weaker bones, and more body fat. However, exercise can help to combat these changes and keep you healthier well into your retirement years. Staying active is extremely beneficial for your body composition and mental wellness.

Green tea is one of the world’s healthiest beverages—and for good reason. It carries several benefits, including all the ways it can help promote healthy body composition. Green tea is a natural “fat burner,” and it also magnifies the beneficial effects of cardio and strength exercise. The compounds in green tea may additionally help you de-stress, which is great for your body.

For certain groups, including women, black people and people with low income, who make up the majority of Americans classified as “obese,” this outdated form of measurement - that makes no distinction between bone density, muscle mass and body fat - may for once be their friend, not foe. In fact, millions of Americans in Texas, New York and Utah have already realized this.

Visceral fat affects the risk of cancer in men and women differently. It puts men at an increased risk of prostate cancer and increases breast cancer risk in women. This may be due to inflammation, which can lead to increased estrogen production. No matter your sex, body fat testing (DEXA/DXA, BOD POD, SECA) is an extremely helpful tool for assessing your risk.

Visceral (belly) fat may increase the risk of certain types of cancer, in both men and women, or contribute to worse outcomes in people who have cancer. Strategies to reduce visceral fat include eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, and reducing your stress level. However, regular body composition testing through DEXA, BOD POD or SECA, is key to understanding and mitigating your risk.

Your ethnic background can influence your risk for various diseases and even play a role in your body composition. For example, we know that Black people tend to have a more favorable fat distribution but higher blood pressure, while Hispanic people may be predisposed to abdominal fat. Additionally, white and Asian women are more prone to osteoporosis. Fortunately, a healthy lifestyle can mitigate your risk.

A normal weight doesn’t necessarily mean you’re healthy. People who are “skinny fat” are outwardly slim but carry excess belly fat that puts them at risk of conditions like heart disease and type 2 diabetes. To improve your body comp, you should focus on eating a protein-rich diet at maintenance calories while incorporating cardio and resistance exercises and regular body composition scans.

Genetics play a huge role in determining your weight and body composition. Your susceptibility to obesity and how fat is distributed on your body are also genetically determined. Fortunately, a healthy lifestyle and regular health monitoring can help to overcome the effects of “bad genes” and help you generate a healthy body composition.

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) implemented whole body DXA scans of survey participants age 8 years and older to provide nationally representative data on body composition.

Results: Females had higher percentage body fat and fat mass than males. After age 11 years, males had higher lean tissue and fat-free mass than females. Percentage body fat was lowest at ages 16–19 years among males and at ages 8–15 years among females.

We now know that having the right microbes is essential to health. But how exactly do we help the “right” strains flourish? What environments should we expose ourselves to? And, what lifestyle factors do we incorporate to integrate healthy strains of bacteria into our gut and get rid of bad ones? In the next couple of posts, we will discuss how exactly we can do that. How we can flourish optimal strains and promote diversity of microbes to create this “lush” bacterial ecosystem.

With so much attention on COVID-19, ordinary elements of many people’s wellness routines have fallen by the wayside. But no amount of hand washing can replace quality nutrition and staying active. In conjunction with healthy lifestyle choices, regular lab testing offers an array of benefits, from catching unwanted muscle loss to revealing valuable insights into your nutritional needs.

At 6-foot-3 and 375 pounds with a BMI of 46.9, Michael Onwenu is “severely” obese. That’s according to official parameters set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), anyway, which relies on the Body Mass Index (BMI) to screen for overweight or obesity. But in addition to being “severely obese,” Onwenu is a professional athlete. And not just any athlete—he’s the strong, fast, and fit offensive lineman for the New England Patriots who has been touted as “one of the best rookies in the NFL.” By using DEXA scan results to inform training programs and provide positive reinforcement, parents and coaches can help young athletes avoid injury, prevent disease, and improve their overall health and performance.

Compared to traditional measures like scale weight and BMI, body composition—or the total amount of fat, muscle, bone, water and other tissues in your body—is a much more valuable indicator of progress. This post will discuss the benefits of monitoring your body composition, suggest how often to check yours, and share science-backed strategies for improving your ratio of lean mass to body fat.

In part one of “The Microbiome and Health,” we discovered how we initially acquire our microbiome, or the collection of microorganisms that inhabit our digestive system. We learned that our initial exposure happens at birth, and we then build on this bacterial ecosystem with increased exposure to different foods, environments, people, and lifestyle factors. We also learned that our microbiome is linked to almost every part of our health. So, what is it about these little critters that’s so important? Has our microbiome changed over evolution? And, which parts of health and disease do our microbes influence exactly (and why is that important)?

Even as you lounge by the pool or relax on the couch watching Netflix, your body is performing basic, life-sustaining functions like breathing, cell growth and repair, and blood circulation. The amount of energy—or the number of calories—your body expends to sustain these functions is your resting metabolic rate (RMR).

Biomarker testing can unlock hyper-personalized recommendations based on the optimization of health, performance, recovery, longevity, and wellbeing. Monitoring your biomarkers at routine intervals—and following a custom plan to improve them—is a powerful way to transform your body over time while avoiding chronic illness and injury. Learn more about how biomarker analysis works and how often you should be testing yours.

Your sex plays a huge role in your body composition, which is why it’s especially important for women to seek out information that’s aimed specifically at them. The business of body composition is a very male-dominated one, so it can be hard to find a clear explanation of how body comp differs in women. And it does differ—a lot! In fact, body composition in women changes from day to day, depending on several factors, such as age, activity level, hormones, and hydration status.