DEXA SCAN? ECHOLIGHT REMS SCAN?

More often than not I find myself suggesting an Echolight REMS bone density scan primarily as a second opinion to help determine the potential precision and accuracy of a similar time frame DXA.

Too frequently, clients bring in their DXA reports as they feel something isn’t right with the information being given. I’m not talking about denial that looks to rationalize that years of exercise avoidance and/or poor dietary practices have left us weak, de-conditioned and vulnerable.

Rather, I refer here to situations where clients are bewildered as to why there can be such great disparity between spine and femur measurements or how such a severely osteoporotic diagnosis could be possible given his/her history of healthy and active lifestyle and previous scans showing no such decline.

A DXA performed competently is still considered the gold standard for bone density measurements, however, the level of competency has become suspect.

After performing enough Echolight scans it became obvious that the aforementioned discrepancies with DXA were in fact flawed and the disparity is exactly what it appeared to be…bad data.

It is not a secret anymore that DXA scans can have a few different variables that can affect measurement outcomes for individual scans as well as cumulative scans over time; the most notable of these variables are machine calibration, performing scans on same machine each time, and technician ability/errors.

The beauty with Echolight is the margins for similar error are greatly reduced while results stay repeatable. Measured BMD, T-Score and fragility scores will almost always be within a certain range of each other. Echolight has helped confirm what I had deduced regarding the human skeleton; that it’s a system not a collection of different ranging parts where one hip is normal, the other is osteoporotic, and the spine is osteopenic.

When we see funky ranges (meaning numbers that are completely off) within one scan then we can consider bad data is tainting the actual situation. In this case, it might be best to hold off before adopting a faulty belief structure about ourselves and the narratives we sell and tell ourselves until we seek a second opinion.

I’m not saying joints relative to one another can’t experience different degrees of arthritis or wear and tear, but that the skeletal system qualities will be consistent across the system (barring any unique external circumstances like long-term horseback riding/jumping, for example).

WHY ECHOLIGHT IS A VALUABLE SECOND OPINION

The most important reason why Echolight is so valuable as a second opinion, from my perspective and work with this for some time now, is because not a business day goes by that a client doesn’t tell me how their AMA practitioner is using the questionable DXA results as a launching point to push pharmaceuticals and shake a mean finger to them “doing wrong.” That’s the real bottom line of that all which is pushing drugs and fear.

At StrengthX, if I find that bone density reports are showing signs of weakness and decline, what I do is make our first conversations about satisfying Wolff’s Law and looking closely at what a client is eating (including supplements and medications).

I take the approach of using logic and common sense, not medical-industrial complex rhetoric and lies.

Strength is an active endeavor, as is Wolff’s Law, and nothing swallowed or injected will ever take that place of that; if you ain’t workin’ then it ain’t workin’ (as I say often to my clients).

The next time your doctor is using scare tactics based off a potentially poor DXA report to push harmful chemicals then I would suggest asking them how the medication reconciles Wolff’s Law. While they think of a clever reply, you can come here to StrengthX for an Echolight scan, and maybe even take advantage of the complementary bioDensity osteogenic loading session to see things through a whole new lens.