BME Summer Immersion 2018: Week Five: BIA! It's like the CIA, but for your body!

This week was a lot of coding, data analysis, and reading of papers. I was hoping to witness a participant visit with full BIA analysis and resting energy expenditure testing, but the participant had to cancel. It seems this is a regular occurrence with study participants and patients, which is unfortunate. This did give me the opportunity to play more with the equipment though. I talked last week about the BIA (Biometric impedance analysis) machine that breaks down one’s body weight into various components but this week I go to try it on myself (Figure 1). I now know that fat is 26.3% and skeletal muscle mass is 40.9% of my total body weight. I also learned what my basal metabolic rate (the calories your body uses in a day to keep vital functions going, such as breathing and keeping warm) is which is within the average 1,300-1,600 calories for someone my age.

Figure 1. Me modeling the BIA device

The second device I experienced this week was the CCM Express Indirect Calorimeter (Figure 2). This device uses direct measurement of oxygen uptake and carbon dioxide production to provide nutritional assessment. It can also be used to determine cardiac output. From this I learned that I take in 192 mL/min of oxygen and output 161 mL/min of carbon dioxide. Also, my body is metabolizing more carbohydrates than fat, which is typical of someone with a normal diet like mine. This device can be especially useful in the ICU when patients are unconscious and on ventilators since it can provide information on their heart function and if they are being properly feed. Hopefully next week I will have the chance to observe a participant visit so I can see how information is collected for the data set I have been analyzing. Thank you so much to Dr. Hootman, the Director of Nutrition Research Core here at Weill Cornell Medicine, for showing me her tools and helping me take these amazing pictures.

Figure 2. Me Modeling the CCM Express Indirect Calorimeter

Last weekend was a blast. Saturday morning, we went to Coney Island and walked along the boardwalk and the beach (Figures 3 and 4). Then we went the New York Aquarium (Figure 5) where they just opened a new shark exhibit. The sea lion show was especially adorable and charismatic (Figure 6). That afternoon we traveled to Brooklyn where I spent a while in a cute yarn shop and laid in Prospect Park. To end the 11-mile day, we walked across the Brooklyn bridge before heading home (Figure 7). I slept for 12 hours to recover. On Sunday, I went to Broadway where I saw Chicago. It was amazing, and I have wanted to go back since the show ended. Unfortunately, for me all my favorite shows have tickets well over $100. Only two full weekends left here but I think I have done most of the things I wanted to.