Body composition and health status among the muslim adults of Shillong

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he term "body composition" is used to illustrate the different components that, when taken together, makes up a person's body weight. It is defined as the constitution of the body in terms of the "absolute and relative amounts of adipose tissue, muscle mass, skeletal mass, internal organs and other tissues" (Bogin, 1999). It may also be defined as the proportional amount of different body components in terms of water, bones and tissues relative to the total body mass or body weight. In general, body composition is divided into two major components, namely, fat free mass (FFM) and fat mass (FM). FFM refers to "body mass minus ether extractable fat, and hence includes the stroma of adipose tissue" (Forbes, 1987). In body composition research, body mass is considered as the sum of all components at each of the five levels namely, atomic, molecular, cellular, tissue-organ and whole-body (Wang et al., 1992).