Welcome to episode number 114 of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Andrew Ho-Peng, who is from Dexar, Melbourne and Dexar is a body composition scan that tells you your bone density, your visceral fat levels, your lean muscle mass and a number of other things and so a really good way to check in with your health and well-being. I used this six months prior to training for the rotten ass swim. I got a scan done then just to sort of check where I was at. Then I got a scan done the week after the swim because I wanted to see the change that my body went through over that six months when I changed the type of training I was doing and the volume of training and it was a real eye opener as to what changes in terms of visceral fat levels and lean muscle mass that my body went through with that change in from sprinting to long distance swimming and Andrew is going to explain a little bit about what Dexar does, who it’s best used for and some examples of some

of the clients that he’s had come through and used it as a bit of a motivator and a way to check in with their progress because standing on the scales can only tell you so much. You really need to break it down with those different levels from visceral fat and lean muscle mass and you need to be able to look into it with a bit more detail and that’s what I found Dexar to be really useful for. So welcome to the podcast, Andrew Ho-Peng from Dexar, Melbourne.

You help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Andrew welcome to the podcast, we’ve known each other, well we’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks but I sort of got introduced to what you do in Melbourne about six months ago and you’ve had the Dexar, you’ve had that business in Melbourne for a little while now and it’s from my own experience I’ve really really enjoyed it. I mean, how’d you come about Dexar and starting that up in Melbourne and sort of where’s it at at the moment? Yeah, so we’ve had Dexar and Melbourne now for just over two years. The idea came together when we were using it quite frequently as a dietician so a lot of allied health learn about Dexar at university but once they finish uni they tend not to really use the technology that much. Most sports dieticians will use skin folds and other body assessment tools and so we

really were intrigued by the level of accuracy and precision in the actual measurement that Dexar could offer and then we started using it at our practice, at our nutrition practice and then just over coffee one day we had a chat and we said, hey, what would it look like and what would it be like if we could bring Dexar in-house? So we went down the pathway, we built the business idea, we got the licensing and then we got the training and then from there we just basically opened up Dexar Melbourne and became I guess dual experts as sports dieticians and then also in the area of Dexar. And what I really like it for is like the way I used it basically was I got a scan done I think about five or six months out from when I did the Rotner swim and then I got one the week after the swim because I just wanted to see what well number one I wanted to see where I was at just in terms of muscle mass and fat mass and all

that sort of stuff and but really just look at any changes that my body would go through when I started training for more long distance and it’s I like that it’s it’s the accuracy of it basically it just you don’t you can’t hide from it it’s like when you have underwater filming that like we do at clinics and online is there’s just no hiding from the camera and there’s no hiding from the Dexar scan it’s that it tells all truth and there’s no no emotion tied up in in that so I think just in terms of a way to really get a good assessment on your your health is is by using that and I mean what sort of clients do you have come in is it all elite athletes or is there people like myself yeah a really good question and that’s probably the question we get asked the most if you look at Dexar what it essentially does is it measures body composition and that it also measures visceral fat which is internal belly

fat and also measures bone density and understanding that components of your body and how it changes over time can really go across many areas and many population groups so the common one when people think about Dexar they often think about athletes and that’s because when you look at all the marketing done around Dexar even with here what we do with Dexar Melbourne it’s often promoted you know athletes use and that’s because that they tend to be very involved in manipulating their body composition for sporting performance it could be because they’re trying to make weight for a competition so they’re in a weight-sensitive sport or they’re in an aesthetic sport so something like bodybuilding where they want to be as lean as possible so tracking changes the fat and muscle over time for an athlete it’s a very important part of their overall performance programming and then obviously if you can track change

you can readjust your nutrition program and you can readjust your exercise program based on the data that you collect at each time you get a scam areas now where Dexar is merging into is around metabolic health so because we can measure that visceral fat component people with diabetes or heart disease are really interested in in understanding that because when we look at visceral fat it tends to have one of the strongest relative risks to some of those health conditions so a big area now is definitely around metabolic health and metabolic based disease so you know fatty liver etc we use it for other areas of people’s health in muscle wastage conditions so things like muscular dystrophy and psychopenia so the loss of muscle tissue we can use it there policies to go variant disease if we’re thinking about female health we we see it we use it there too but that that just trying to give you a broad overview so there is definitely a clinical aspect there’s always that

sporting aspect there’s the obese overweight aspect too that we use it and that’s just ties back to those who are overweight and obese tend to have high metabolic risk so we can track visceral fat and if they’re trying to lose weight we can obviously track what’s happening to their body fat so it’s got a quite a broad role and then it’s obviously got the bone density component to which is what it was originally created for yeah I like that like it breaks things down so so well it’s you know rather than just stepping on the scales and going okay I’m 82 kilos today then yeah that’s obviously that’s a mixture of you your bone density the weight of your bones you the weight of your fat and your muscle and the way you break it down in the report it measures that really accurately and the one thing I saw when I had those two scans two months apart was I lost I lost a kilo and a half for muscle and a half a

kilo of fat just well because I picked up the long-distance training and I started to do only endurance and before that I was doing a little bit more gym and I was still eating quite well so I didn’t have too much extra extra fat on me but it was just it was good to see that change over time and I think you know a kilo and a half of drop in muscle mass is is a fair bit but there’s a reason behind it so you know you and like you know you ask the right questions to you don’t you kind of ask the right so what you know what he meant doing the last sort of six months or so since then that that might lead to that and it just it’s a really good sort of check-in that that gives you more detail than just what a good what the weight on a scale would tell you yeah yeah you’re exactly right and one of the the I guess the backbone for our business was to help our clients use Dexart to the to the best that you can

so we really focus on reliability in the measurement over time so Dexart the technology itself is very accurate precise but if it’s not used in certain ways or inappropriately so you know around client preparation the scan positioning and the scan acquisition there are variables that can impact the the measurement itself and that goes for all types of indirect body composition tools like skin folds or pod pod or the scales that you get at home so as a practice we really focus on that and the good thing is we we’ve been able to show and even in it supports it supportive in the research as well you can track two to 300 gram tissue change with a high degree of confidence so that’s one part of what we do is you know the the best use of Dexart but then also the the education component so if you look at a lot of the Dexart practices now they are often in radiology clinics they tend to do scan only services and so we you

know you can really get a Dexart anywhere but understanding what it means for you your individual situation is so so important you’ve got all this great data but contextualizing it to your diet or your exercise habits or you know your body composition goals is what where we find there is the primary reason why clients love working with us is because we’ve got that dietitian background and we can help guide them through that that journey and like you’re saying before you know you can stuff around your exercise habits and so we knew that that there was a change from you know a bit of strength based and more endurance so it’s expected to see a bit of muscle loss because of those changes in training and so I obviously could explain that to you whereas if you didn’t have that education component you might find someone has those results and then they might think that they’re doing something wrong or they’re not training as best as they can but it wasn’t

wasn’t because you weren’t training well eating well it’s because of the types of training you’re doing and the changes that would occur off the back of that so it’s really an expected result yeah so that’s when you combine the two together it could be a very powerful tool for a client because they get to sit down with an expert and figure out all that data and what actually means for them and it’s it’s very inexpensive too I think for what you for what you get and the I guess the level of detail and and accuracy of it as well like it’s yeah it’s it’s something that you couldn’t can easily justify doing every you know six months or so if not more regularly if you wanted to and I mean what what sort of if you think of in terms of like your best your your best clients or the people who who really love it what could you give me maybe one or two examples obviously without giving names and stuff but of someone who’s used it as a bit of a motivator for them yeah yep to

improve absolutely there’s two clients that come into mind and this was one I was actually speaking to I was speaking about this kind the other day to another a new client that we had so I put it this one’s a sporty type example so this client was a crossfitter and she wanted to maintain her weight but improve her composition and so she was competing at from memory I think 64 kilograms but she knew she was probably in terms of her power to weight ratio and her lifts you just need to be a little bit leaner and carry less body fat but wanted to wait the same at this at the same total weight so we worked with her over the year doing a dexter scans and we did some nutrition stuff as well so our practitioners here have their own respective nutrition practices to as dietitians and in one year we were able to reduce her body fat by four and a half kilos and increase her lean muscle by four and a half kilos and she was weight stable and the beauty about Dexter was we

had certain periods that we worked on there was a like a cutting phase or reducing body fat and increasing muscle but if you look at the year’s journey she basically was exactly the same on the scale but her composition was significantly different and that was exactly what we’re aiming for and it really just highlights when you nail down into composition it offers you a lot more detail than just using total weight especially for someone that’s in a weight loss journey or in a you know that athletic active journey it’s so so important and to see the data it’s it’s amazing to watch how it’s changed over time and then when you match it to the dietary interventions and exercise interventions it makes sense there was points where she lost a little bit too much muscle because we lost muscle through the cutting phase so we readjusted her exercise and nutrition and then she put on muscle and continued to drop

body fat so it’s just such a powerful tool and when you apply it with you know a dietitian or an exercise professional it just it’s it’s a great way to link everything together when you have that objective data yeah that’s huge sorry great no yeah I was gonna I had the the second client’s example so I had a diabetic client that I was working with and I’ll never forget him because before their appointment they called me and they said Andrew I’m trying to lose weight I’ve put on weight I said okay well we’re focusing on composition not total weight and so this was a client that had just been diagnosed with diabetes and they’ve never really eaten well in their life they’re never really exercise and they’ve they’ve fallen into this this health condition and the doctors on their back you’ve got to change and you’re gonna have to take medication and so they seek their services and then they did they seek my dietitian services and so you know set them up

on a dietary plan they started exercising and they did put on weight when we looked at their total weight they put on half a kilo but when we looked at the composition breakdown they had lost two kilos of body fat and put on two and a half kilos of muscle and their visceral fat significantly changed and their blood sugar levels were well in control with just that small amount of change in their body fat and basically from then you know they won firstly surprise but then we could reinforce all their positive changes they had made and then the feedback to the doctor was you know this client’s doing great and you know they’re losing weight and they’re building muscle the doctor you know didn’t want to consider medication because they felt confident they could manage their health and the and their developing diabetes just through diet and exercise alone and so if this client I guess had used you know the scales or subjective type measurements

they would have no idea that they had a significant improvement in their composition so fat and muscle and then their metabolic health by reducing visceral fat so it’s just an awesome tool in those situations. Yeah that’s that’s such a such a difference it’s I was speaking to a mutual friend Tara, Tara Daversi who she helps a lot of people fuel right and get their feeding strategies right for for marathon swimming and she was saying a similar sort of thing is it’s very easy for someone to say this works or this doesn’t work without giving it well either without giving it enough time to work or without seeing the true the actual results or the truth in it so like for her it was she might have someone who will try one type of feeding or you know let’s say one type of gel or one type of fruit or something to feed on and it works one time in one situation and they say I’ll look this this works great I want to stick with this and do this only but it’s not really

seeing the true that the truth behind it because you need to try it out more than once and you need to try it in different situations where it’s really just about about seeking the truth there and that’s I mean your example there’s a such a great example of getting the real I guess the proper information behind it so it’s what I liked about it too when I had my scan is it’s it’s it’s almost like the reward you get for or for training or putting in a lot of effort it’s a it’s a really delayed gratification so I had my scan six months apart and you sort of see that that second result and all this work has gone into it all this training all this eating well and everything and then you see it on paper but it’s a really delayed gratification and you need to be patient with it but yeah it’s a nice it’s a nice little reward at the end there to kind of see the result if you put in in the work but it’s not something that’s going to happen

overnight yeah exactly right and even if like we’ve had some clients that might have a negative result the good thing is that we’re able to sit down and really work through what’s going on is was it the exercise that led to the negative result was the nutrition and then you can use that info to then make some more changes and so you’re continuously progressing and working on things so even whether they’re positive or negative results it’s all it all can be used for good conversation with the professional that understands sport or clinical health and obviously the decks are to then figure out what is the next step so rather than taking two steps backwards and one forwards we’re always moving forward with our clients yeah that’s right it’s like a it’s like when you’re training for a or when you’re training for a big race it’s good to have some some races in between just to check your progress and see whether you’re on track or you’ve you’ve slipped behind maybe you you might

fail somewhat in that race where you may not have fed properly or your strategy may not have worked and then it’s good to chat with your coach after that race and see where it went wrong and adjust so it’s exactly the same with with diet and and all that sort of stuff so it’s yeah just it’s almost like yeah you use races to check in with with your progress it’s the same thing for for your health and well-being yeah absolutely definitely so everyone who’s listening to this who’s in Melbourne or who visits Melbourne what’s the best way to book a scan with you and and find out what you guys do and where you are so our website will house all of that information we’ve also got a live booking function so our complete availability will be there and you can just book in online or you could contact us the website address is www.dexamalban.com.au so Dex is D E X A and then you have Melbourne and so that’s that’s always going to be the yeah the best way to get in contact with

this and for people who are outside of Australia is there there’s places to get this done everywhere else yeah good question there definitely is it every state has a private dexa practice I guess like ours they do dexa scanning whether they have dieticians that work there or if their protocols are different obviously it’s very practice specific but you definitely can get a dexa dexa scan in a practice like ours in a private setting dex is in a lot of places there’s a lot of radiology clinics or hospitals that use them but often you have to get a referral to use the services in the in a hospital setting or something so just maybe Google your state so you know Sydney and right dexa or you know Perth and right dexa and then something definitely will come up but it is it is widely available in Australia but just always keep in mind that every practice is slightly different so some some states you need a referral other states like Victoria you don’t need a

referral for a dexa scan great well yeah I really got a lot out of it and I’m going to use it I think every six months I’m going to to come in and just to have a check-in where I’m at and I’ve just entered a hundred K running race for September which is about another six months away so I’ve been interested interested to see what what changes my body goes through with with that as well because it’s I think I’ll become a lot less top-heavy because I won’t be swinging as much but yeah I’m looking forward to that and I appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing a bit more about dexa it’s it’s a really good tool to use and it’s great that it’s available in so many different places so thank you again yeah my pleasure I hope everyone enjoyed listening to the podcast but yeah if anyone out there’s got questions about dexa and they think it’s important for them but they just want to figure out you know if it’s appropriate or not then you know we’re

welcome we’re happy to take some emails and calls along the way and help help those people make that decision so yeah that’s for your listeners they’re welcome to give us a call anytime and that’s just on the on the dexa Melbourne website yeah yeah great thanks again Andrew no problem thanks for today appreciate it thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com