Google says:
A FibroScan is a non-invasive ultrasound that measures liver stiffness to assess liver health and detect liver disease:
A medical professional places an ultrasound-like probe on the patient’s skin over their liver and generates vibration waves. The machine reads the speed and attenuation of the waves to produce a stiffness score and a fat score.
The stiffness score indicates the amount of scarring (fibrosis) in the liver. The fat score measures the amount of fat in the liver.
fibroscan - Google Search
Also, gack, yikes, happily google also claims there are treatments
Alani
#84
is it fiber skin just for liver disease? Does this really predict how much body fat I have my body weight is normal
JuanDaw
#85
Body Fat Percentage Calculator - US Navy Method - Best Trainer in Dubai.
US Navy Body Fat % calculator is considered accurate to approximately 3–4% whereas with DEXA (another popular method) the individual error rates tend to hover around 5%, although some studies have shown error rates as high as 10%.
Moreover, the DEXA scan comes at the cost of using a machine and which includes the time and cost of getting to a machine and paying for using it whereas the US Navy method can be used anywhere including from home by measuring the circumference of required body parts and using an online calculator like above to get the body fat percentage.
The U.S. Navy implemented its current body composition assessment (BCA) program in 1982. The Naval Health Research Center (NHRC) has conducted several research studies in the past to find a more accurate, affordable, and/or time-efficient body fat estimation technique.
However, none of the NHRC studies resulted in changes to the Navy’s BCA program. The results of the study showed that using standalone DEXA measurements would increase the estimated percent body fat for males and decrease the estimated percent body fat for females as compared with the Navy’s current method.
> How accurate is the navy body fat calculator?*
The US Navy body fat calculator is accurate to approximately 3–4%.
Both assertions are from fitness websites. I cannot find the source of the assertions.
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I think the FibroScan is just for the liver, yes.
a new way to lose that visceral fat? (Exogenous ketones).
Highlights
• A ketone shunt derivatizes β-hydroxybutyrate by conjugation with amino acids
• BHB-amino acids are endogenous mouse and human metabolites
• BHB-Phe administration decreases food intake and body weight in obese mice
Summary
β-Hydroxybutyrate (BHB) is an abundant ketone body. To date, all known pathways of BHB metabolism involve the interconversion of BHB and primary energy intermediates. Here, we identify a previously undescribed BHB secondary metabolic pathway via CNDP2-dependent enzymatic conjugation of BHB and free amino acids. This BHB shunt pathway generates a family of anti-obesity ketone metabolites, the BHB-amino acids. Genetic ablation of CNDP2 in mice eliminates tissue amino acid BHB-ylation activity and reduces BHB-amino acid levels. The most abundant BHB-amino acid, BHB-Phe, is a ketosis-inducible congener of Lac-Phe that activates hypothalamic and brainstem neurons and suppresses feeding. Conversely, CNDP2-KO mice exhibit increased food intake and body weight following exogenous ketone ester supplementation or a ketogenic diet. CNDP2-dependent amino acid BHB-ylation and BHB-amino acid metabolites are also conserved in humans. Therefore, enzymatic amino acid BHB-ylation defines a ketone shunt pathway and bioactive ketone metabolites linked to energy balance.
Full Paper (Open Access):
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)01214-5
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Calorie restriction it is (for me)!
increased visceral adiposity plays the major role in inducing hepatic insulin resistance. Thus, interventions designed to prevent the accumulation of VF are likely to represent an effective mean to improve carbohydrate metabolism in aging.
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I’ve always been confused by what they mean by 3-4%, 5% or 10% error rates. Do they mean absolute? Or as a percentage (of a percentage)? If I get a dexa result that says 10%, does that mean it’s anywhere between 5% and 15%? Or is it 9.5% - 10.5%?
My confusion stems from many blog articles/influencers quoting this and then applying it as an absolute difference, but in pretty much any other instance error rates are described as relative.
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My DEXA scan today seems to think I have 0lbs of visceral fat mass with 0.12 in^3 of volume. Not sure how that works.
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Does that “feel” right to you - do you think its close to that? Are you as thin as they think you are?
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The previous result was 0.2 at 12.9% body fat, this one is at 10.8%. Given the trend (each of the results were at less total body fat than the previous), it seems reasonable that it would decrease. I guess I just never expected to see 0.
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JuanDaw
#93
That’s how they explain it.
So, if you use a BIA machine and get a reading of 20%, your actual body fat could be anywhere from 12–28%. If you use the US Navy body fat calculator and get a reading of 20%, your actual body fat could be anywhere from 17-23%. This is the difference between being useless and helpful.
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59vw
#95
10-13% total body fat is a tough target. I need to do a dexa to see where I fall out but judging from people at various body fat percentages I bet I’m closer to 18%. Calorie restriction is tough.
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Some time ago I recall you mentioning you were focusing on vo2max as a longevity intervention. How have you resolved to integrate vo2max improvement with calorie restriction? Personally, I find calorie deficits (via food intake reduction) and regular medium and high intensity cardio exercise as incompatible with my will to live.
@RapAdmin thanks. This is interesting information given @ConquerAging extreme food restrictions. I recall him saying he has long weight over the years of his biohacking efforts. Both muscle and fat. His BF% isn’t as low as I expected for him. But I’d guess (given his rigid control) that his 15% BF% is “optimal” for his biomarkers. It is also surprising to me that his visceral fat isn’t lower. It isn’t high by any measure but given who this is….
My own goals included getting lower (“close to zero”) on visceral fat. In June last year I was at 16% BF% and 423g VF (vs video: 14-15% BF and 273-316g VF). I now wonder if my VF goal isn’t useful …perhaps I shouldn’t aim for lower body fat given the extreme difficulty calorie restriction puts on vo2max and muscle mass improvement.
My efforts since last June have been aimed at improving vo2max, strength, adaptive homeostasis expansion, and circadian rhythm alignment …all of which have come along nicely. But I’ve had to feed my body to survive (feels like). I already don’t consume any crap calories (alcohol, added sugar, added fat, liquid calories, snacks).
I think I’ll just do the FMD every 3 months to reset and target staying around 15% BF. Always grab the low hanging fruit; never make perfect the enemy of good.
Thoughts? Anyone?
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Anecdotally (from personal experience and others), moving down to 10% body fat comes with a host of other issues, hormones tank, sleep gets worse, etc. At least the first time one does it. The common phrase used is that your body starts to fight against weight loss more and more as your body fat gets lower. So there’s definitely a tradeoff there to consider.
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I agree with @dicarlo2. When I used to be a competitive cyclist in my late teen years, I was down to 4-5% body fat. It was painless then and something I wasn’t goaling for. Used to ride 80 miles of hills up to 8800 ft several times weekly in S. Cal. Could eat whatever I wanted.
However this isn’t adult life, and I find that men often are goaling for being under 10%. I personally find that men are not particularly happy under 15% and women under 20%.
Whole Body DEXA offered through a multitude of services is the way to go, as total body fat probably doesn’t matter (apart from cosmetics) it is the visceral fat that we have to track, and everyone has a different threshold for packing things viscerally. Whites tend to be the best at keeping things in the periphery, whereas Asians tend to be the worst (e.g. at a lower % body fat, it starts going visceral, and thus if using BMI need to goal lower - but better to use DEXA).
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This is a work in progress. My priority right now is the visceral fat (and general body fat), which I want to get down significantly to a lower level that is more directly in line with the optimal range (under 200grams visceral?)… After I get my visceral fat down to my target zone I will focus more on Vo2Max.
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L_H
#101
under 200g visceral? what are you assuming that will mean for your toral bodyfat%?
i assume under 10% body fat was suboptimal. But
I wonder if a short term drop to very low levels of visceral fat might offer outsized benefit by flushing out a high number of senescent cells.
Folks, there is an issue with relying on DEXA too much, for visceral fat readings. In Mike Lustgarten’s video on visceral fat, he reports on his experiences with DEXA - he asked the tech to run the test twice, one after the other, he was just lying there, not moving and got scanned twice, and the reading for visceral fat came back with wildly different numbers! So different, it’s pretty useless at assessing anything. Matt Kaeberlein also spoke about the inaccuracy and unreliability of DEXA in general, so I wouldn’t get too attached to any one reading here. I’m not sure it makes sense to make big decisions based on measurements with such flimsy reliability. YMMV.
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