Last week, we got a new Inbody770 Body Composition Analyzer at the CCNM Integrative Cancer Centre and we’re pretty excited. This test provides a comprehensive view of body composition (fat and muscle) as well as body water. Our patients with cancer often experience significant changes in body composition, namely muscle loss, fat gain, or a combination of these factors. When these occur at the same time, weight may not change significantly, which makes both weight and BMI a poor indicator of physiological change. By monitoring objective measures of muscle and fat mass with the InBody770, we can assess physiological changes and symptoms associated with malnutrition, inflammation and cancer cachexia.

We are now in January, a new year with new beginnings and a time when many of our patients are considering detoxification but also weight loss. If you truly want to become healthier this year, working on improving your body composition is the key. We need to lose our obsession with weight and BMI and instead, focus on improving our muscle, water and reducing our fat content – and we can’t accurately do that without first establishing where we are. For example, do we have too little muscle mass, too much fat tissue, too much extracellular water (connected to inflammation), elevated visceral fat (fat that collects around the organs) or too little body fat. Without a proper understanding of your body composition, you may just head off in the wrong direction or miss out on important opportunities to make major improvements to your health.

Something unique to the Inbody770 is its ability to distinguish between water in the intracellular (within the tissues) versus the extracellular (within the blood and interstitial fluids) compartments. This is important because many symptoms of cancer are associated with increased systemic inflammation and progressing fluid imbalances, which are linked to poor outcomes. By tracking where fluid is, we can more accurately assess if fluid retention is due to malnutrition, lymphedema, or disease-related imbalances.

If you are serious about improving your health and achieving long-term outcomes, using an accurate method to measure your body composition can increase your success. At the CCNM Integrative Cancer Centre, all new patients will be assessed with the InBody770 during their first visit and then follow up assessments will be $18 plus HST. For our existing patients, we will conduct one assessment free of charge. We invite you to give the InBody770 a try!