Does Lean Tissue Have More To Say About Your Health Than Your Body Fat?



Carla Prado, PhD,  Assistant Professor and CAIP Chair in Nutrition, Food and Health, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Carla Prado, PhD, Assistant Professor and CAIP Chair in Nutrition, Food and Health, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

The common assumption is that people with more body fat are at greater risk for illness and overall mortality.

Surprisingly, an increasingly robust body of evidence now suggests that how much lean tissue you have may be far more important for your health than the amount of body fat.

This evidence as well as the methodologies used to study lean body mass are discusses in a paper by Carla Prado (University of Alberta) and Steve Heymsfield (Pennington Biomedical Research Center), in a paper published in the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition.

As the authors point out,

“The emerging use of imaging techniques such as dual energy x-ray absorptiometry, computerized tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and ultrasound imaging in the clinical setting have highlighted the importance of lean soft tissue (LST) as an independent predictor of morbidity and mortality.

The paper discusses in depth the advantages and limitation of the many methods that can be used to assess body composition in research and clinical settings.

The paper also discusses the current definition and importance of sarcopenic obesity and notes that,

“The identification of different body composition phenotypes suggests that individuals have different metabolism and hence utilization of fuel sources.”

Thus,

“It is clear from emerging studies that body composition health will be vital in treatment decisions, prognostic outcomes, and quality of life in several nonclinical and clinical states.”

My guess is that it will not just be the absolute or relative amount of lean tissue mass that is important. Rather, similar to the increasingly recognised role of differences amongst fat depots, I would assume that different lean soft tissue depots may well play different roles in metabolic health.

@DrSharma
Charlottetown, PEI