What are the factor that effect body weight and body composition?

Factor Affecting body Composition:

Numerous factor are responsible for misinterpretation of BC, few of them are being discussed here .

Gender is a predominant factor in determining body composition, females having extra FM as compared to male who carry relatively more lean mass. Woman tend have adiposity around the hips and thigh while men are likely to a mass adipose tissue around the trunk and abdomen.

Age is another factor that affect the body compositions a childhood fatness, maturation, menu- pause in women and old age has a fair share in determine the body composition. Principally, muscle mass decrease with age whereas FM increase. Progressive loss of muscle mass typically associated with aging is termed as sarcopenia.

It affect 10-50%individuals above 65 years of age, resulting in lower muscle strength and frailly. Sarcopenia can be co-morbidity with obesity as a result of fat infiltration in to muscle tissue, called as sarcoptic obesity.

sarcopenia leads to loss of function, disability, increased risk of insulin resistance, fatigue and falls. The relation of age and decremental effect it has on the basal metabolic rate; basic energy requirement of the body, also decreases with age, which can affect the body composition and people tend to gain more weight as they get older.

Diet too affect the body composition, as fat rich diet leads to overweight and result in more fat mass, while diet rich in veggies and fruit maintains the normal weight .

Environmental and social stress stimulates and suppresses the production of certain hormones through which body composition is affected.

Genetic and ethnicity have a role to play as peoples from different geographic locations have variable proportion of fat and fat- free mass.

Physical activity level influence the body composition as active person have more FFM as compared to sedentary ones.

Pathological conditions such as AIDS, some type of cancer, certain digestive tract diseases, and chronic kidney failure may lead to cachexia(abrupt weight loss especially of fat free mass).

Osteoporosis is characterized by loss of bone mineral density along with low bone mass, leading to weak and brittle bones. The condition increases the risk of fractures of wrist, hip and spin.

Pregnancy influences body composition by producing hormones which cause fat accumulation. Thus, pregnant women have more FM as compared to non - pregnant women. Thus, while carrying body compositional analysis, above mentioned factor should be kept in the mind . Fat distribution in the body varies;

some people are apple - shaped and accumulate most of the excess body fat around their stomach . Other, however, are pear- shaped and gather most of the excess body fat around their thighs, hips and buttock. One may check if he is apple- or pear- shaped by dividing his waist circumference with the hip measurement;

yielding waist - to- hip ratio women having waist - to - hip ratios in excess of 0.8 and men with waist -to - hip ratio of >1.0 are apple- shaped . Apple- shaped people are at more risk of developing metabolic syndrome than the pear- shaped ones