Circumference no measurement for body shaping

54th Clinical and Scientific Dermatology Meeting of the University of Ottawa

Key note speaker, Dr Christopher Zachary, presented new data on body shaping, fat measurement, and the science of skin rejuvenating at this venerable Canadian Dermatology Society. He debunked the myth of abdominal circumference as being a reliable method for measuring fat reduction with any of the body shaping devices. “The results are so wildly inflated as to be a source of real concern for the FDA, which used such measurements as evidence of improvement following fat reduction procedures.” “All measurements can be fudged”, said Dr Zachary, “but the use of a tape measure just doesn’t cut it”.

More reliable traditional measures are MRI, CT, and Ultrasound. The first two are expensive, and are probably not going to be used for this and other reasons. Ultrasound can be very reproducible if performed carefully, and by an experienced ultrasound operator. The new device to consider is three dimensional vector imaging, which is extremely accurate and reproducible. Although costly, it can be very convincing. So here’s a quick message to the fat busting device companies, “only use these accurate measuring techniques if you are convinced your device works …. Otherwise you might demonstrate to the world that the emperor has no clothes.”