Isn’t under water weighing (hydrodensitometry) the gold standard in body mass measurement?
While underwater weighing (UWW) was considered the most accurate method to assess percent body fat in the past, researchers, elite athletes and medical specialists have been using DXA for more than 15 years. DXA is a three compartment model, accounting for bone mass, lean mass and fat mass while UWW can only differentiate fat and non-fat tissue. Also, to obtain accurate values in UWW a subject’s residual lung volume must be measured. UWW requires a subject to sit very still on a scale while submersed underwater and to have expelled all the air form their lungs. The process is repeated three to ten times and the values are averaged. You can see why most clients prefer a DXA scan over UWW measurements.
