Body Fat and Fat Mass-Fat Free Mass Ratio Estimated by Bioelectrical Impedance in the Nutritional Evaluation of Women Aged 35 to 55 Years

Abstract

Background: Nutritional evaluation during pre-menopause and menopause plays an important role in assessing the changes taking place in a woman s body, a comparison being drawn in this study between the parameters body fat and body fat-muscle ratio (BFMR) estimated by impedancemetry and the body mass index (BMI) for defining nutritional status and body composition. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study. By random sampling (health card basis), thirty women within the 35-55 age range were selected and then evaluated regarding the relationship between body fat and fat mass (FM)-fat free mass (FFM) ratio (FM/FFM =BFMR) and the BMI, different means of estimating body fat distribution: waist and iliac region circumferences, waist-hip and iliac region-hip ratios and iliac region and sagittal diameters; systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressures (DBP) and serum levels of glucose, cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol and triglycerides. Results: The percentage of body fat was highly correlated (p<0.001) with BMI (r=0.919), waist (r=0.866) and iliac region (r=0.841) circumferences and sagittal (r=0.783) and iliac region (r=0.772) diameters, and less highly with glycemia (r=0.385; p=0.036) and the SBP (r=0.497; p=0.005) and DBP (r=0.582; p=0.001). The BFMR showed similar results, no being significantly related to any biochemical parameter. 46.7% of the obese women as per their percentage of body fat (>33%) had a BMI of under 30. Conclusions: The estimating of the body fat and BFMR parameters among women within the 35-55 age range supplements the nutritional evaluation made by means of the BMI, although in order to define their true figures in this evaluation, the reference values must for the population as a whole must be determined