What is Phase Angle?

The importance of knowing our cellular health is fast becoming a key marker of our general wellbeing.

Phase angle is perhaps the most widely used of these “markers.”

The term phase angle is now a hot topic and frequently referred to as a global health marker within the clinical nutrition community and research into cellular health.

Phase Angle is the direct measurement of the integrity of cell membranes and how well they function - a measurement of your body’s overall health

When illness or malnutrition occurs, the voltage of the cell membrane is altered, which is picked up as a lower Phase Angle.

• A low phase angle is an indicator of cell membrane breakdown and an inability of cells to store energy.*
• A high phase angle indicates that the membranes of the cells are intact and body cell mass (BCM) is high.*

*It is important to note that every individual will have their own ‘normal’ phase angle and what might be a low value for one person, could be a completely normal value for another.

So, whatever value your assessment shows to be your Phase Angle, it is used as a control and changes are monitored over time to track recovery of illness or use as preventative marker before onset of illness occurs.

The Bodystat device we use for our body scans, is unique in that it MEASURES Phase Angle rather than calculating Phase Angle, providing a far more accurate assessment of health.

Wellness Marker - Keeping it simple

Understanding the science behind “Phase Angle” for many people, is hard going. It’s complicated.

So, as well as giving you your Phase angle in your assessment report, we also provide you with a “Wellness Marker”

So what it is?

In short, it’s very similar to Phase angle, but easier to understand.

The Wellness Marker is for the benefit of further measurement analysis on the athletic, normal healthy and obese population groups.

Body cells are “nonconductive” at a low frequency of 5 kHz and restrict the flow of current. High Impedance values are then measured in the human body.

At the higher frequency of 50 kHz, the body cells become more conductive and a lower Impedance value is measured.

The integrity of cells can be characterised by the ratio between measured impedance values at 50 kHz and 5 kHz.

This ratio is also called the Wellness Marker.

The “normal” value for a healthy person would be around 0.845; more athletic, muscular highly trained individuals would have lower values. In different “unhealthy” situations this ratio would creep closer to 1.00.

Therefore, the lower the ratio, the healthier and more hydrated the body cells; the higher the ratio, potentially the less healthy the body cells.

The Wellness Marker could therefore be used as a generalised state of health of the body cells.

In summary, a ratio closer to 1.00 indicates poor cellular health or extreme fluid overload.