Development of a foot-to-foot impedancemeter for measuring body composition during exercise
Résumé
Foot-to-foot impedancemeters (FFI) are cheaper, simpler and quicker to use than medical type
impedancemeters. The purpose of this work was to increase the functions of a prototype FFI derived from a
commercially available FFI (Tefal Bodymaster Vision ,Rumilly, France) with performing electronics, in order to
obtain extracellular (ECW), total body water (TBW) volumes, body cell mass (BCM) and muscle mass in
addition to weight and fat-free mass. A modification of the FFI permitted also to use it with hand and feet
reusable electrodes. ECW and TBW measurements with the FFI were achieved by comparison with
measurements made using a multifrequency medical impedancemeter Hydra 4200 (Xitron Tech, San Diego) and
Dual X ray absorptiometry and appropriate modifications of the bioimpedance spectroscopic (BIS) method (1,
2).
For BCM and muscle mass, we used Kotler’s and Wang’s methods respectively to relate them to the total body
potassium concentration TBK as
BCM = 0.0083 TBK, Muscle mass=0.0093 TBK+0.024 Age-3.21
where TBK is expressed in terms of Xcp, the equivalent reactance at 50 kHz, the subject height H, and his
weight W.
These methods were applied on a group of 52 children: 12 controls did not practice exercise, 20 jogged
intermittently and 20 jogged regularly for three months. Changes in all the physiologic parameters listed above
during this period as well as improvement in running speed for the three groups were compared and will be
reported.
With further development, this FFI prototype, which is easy to