Posture and Body

Composition
Presented by
Maimoona Gilani
Parkha Khan
Maryam Javed
Jaweria Anwar
Sidra
 Posture
Posture can be defined as the maintenance of correct alignment of body parts.
People thought of posture as maintaining static or unmoving positions, but postural
adjustments for maintenance of good posture during rest or activity involve
continuous adjustments and awareness of where the body is in space.
Poor postural habits leads to body malalignment and musculoskeletal conditions e.g.
low back pain.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15% of adult physicians
visits are related to back pain.
Low back pain is common in:
1. sedentary individuals with poor sitting posture
2. individuals who injure their back during manual labor.
In both instances, proper posture during sitting and lifting heavy objects play a key
role in reducing the risk of low back pain and disability.

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 Lordosis, also referred to as sway back, or increased curve in the lower spine, is commonly
detected and often leads to back pain in later life.
Proper exercise and postural alignment can alleviate some of the chronic back pain.
The forward bending test is often used for the screening and detection of spinal
malalignment.

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 Body Composition
• Body composition is the final aspect of health related fitness.
• Often represented as two components: lean body weight and fat weight.
• The NIH uses body mass index (BMI) to define normal weight, overweight
and obesity, because correlates strongly with the total body fat contents.
• According to NIH,
BMI of 25-29.9 kg/m2 = overweight
BMI of 30kg/m2 or above = obesity

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 • Health and fitness professionals use a wide range of tests to determine
body composition. Some measures of sophisticated and costly, whereas
others involve low cost equipments and precise measurement techniques
for increased reliability:
1. Skinfold thickness measurements involves measuring skin and
subcutaneous adipose tissue at several different standard anatomical sites
around the body and converting these measurements to percentage body
fat. One calculation for the percent body fat is
% body fat = (fat weight/ total body weight) x 100

2. BMI is the key for relating a persons body weight to height. The BMI
equation is as follows:
BMI = M/(H X H)
Where M = body mass in kg, H = height in meters.
A higher BMI score indicates higher levels of body fat. This calculation is
accurate for normal populations but is not valid of elderly populations,
pregnant women or muscular athletes.

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 • Waist to hip ratio is measured using a tape measure
around the waist and largest hip circumference. The ratio
is waist girth divided by hip girth.

• Girth measurement or circumferential measures of various

body parts indicate growth, nutritional status and fat
patterning. body breadth measurements are taken at the
hips, shoulder, extremities.

• Hydrostatic weighing has been called the gold standard

for measuring body composition. For this assessment the
individual dressed in minimal clothing is weighed for the
dry weight. Body density is then calculated, taking into
account the body weight, the density of water, the residual
lung volume and corrections for air trapped in GIT

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 10. Computed tomography (CT)
CT scans the body, providing cross-sectional images of each scan. A
radiograph tube sends a beam of photons toward a detector. As the beam
rotates around a person, data are collected, stored, and applied to calculations
that determine body composition. CT is particularly useful in giving a ratio of
intra-abdominal fat to extra-abdominal fat. Although CT scans are
noninvasive, they subject individuals to radiation and are extremely costly.

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 11. The BOD POD (COSMED, Rome, Italy): Instead of using water to measure body volume,
uses air displacement. The BOD POD uses computerized sensors to measure how much air is
displaced while a person sits within the capsule, then calculates the body density and estimated
body fat.
This new equipment is expensive and limited in availability but provides values highly
correlated with hydrostatic weighing.

Although these measures provide a variety of indices for physical fitness, it is important to
consider that physical fitness is influenced by
1. Genetics
2. Environmental influences
3. Individual's activity levels
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 Thank you ANY QUESTIONS?

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