How Does Hydration Affect Body Fat Measurement

Dehydration is a recognized factor affecting bia measurements as it causes an increase in the bodys electrical resistance so has been measured to cause a 5 kg underestimation of fat free mass ie. Research findings by the chicago state university suggested that dehydration of 29 body mass decreases the ability to generate upper and lower body strength. How does hydration affect the output on a body fat scale.
how does hydration affect body fat measurement

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Hydration was measured three times throughout the 10 measurements using bioelectrical impedance analysis bia.

How does hydration affect body fat measurement. Body fat scales can be an easy way to track your body fat percentage but they may not tell the complete story about your health. That means that your changing level of hydration can have a significant effect on the body fat reading that you get. There seems to be a lot of mixed answers to how hydration affects the body fat readings. For an adult body water is expected to be 69 74 of lean body weight.

A reading below 69 may indicate dehydration and result in a fat weight reading that is 3 5 too high. When is the most accurate time of day to check your body fat. Your body fat is pretty water dense so dense in fact that body fat is comprised of about 10 water. The researchers recommended that coaches and athletes must understand that sports performance requiring strength and power may be impaired by inadequate hydration resulting in increased susceptibility to injury.

Regarding those measurements specific to water and hydration both the 1 l water consumption and holding the bottle containing water resulted in significant increases in ffm without a significant change in fm. For example on the tanita website tanita is a brand of body fat scales it says under the faqs section that dehydration causes the body fat reading to come out higher than it actually is. I have noticed that if i have a few beers the next morning my body fat reading is higher than i suspect it should be. Body fat measurements are lower when measurements are taken shortly after consumption of a meal causing a variation.

Its a calculation of your weight to height ratio and can provide insight into risk for diseases. By increasing the amount of water in your body youre effectively increasing your lean tissue amount and decreasing your body fat percentage. Body mass index or bmi is the customary method used to measure obesity. This is especially significant after completing a vigorous workout routine.

As you probably know the dxa scan categorizes all non bone and non fat matter as lean tissue including blood and other fluids. I have been told the best time is the first thing in the morning before any food intake. An overestimation of body fat. Its been shown that for every five point increase in bmi your risk of death increases 31 and while bmi cant be used as a sole indicator for disease risk it does help.

As can be expected the majority of the waters effect is on lean tissue. For an adolescent it is expected to be slightly higher. Accuracy can also vary depending on various factors including. Hydration status can be useful when reviewing the results of a body composition test.