The GLP-1 craze is undeniable, with advertising for the injectables flooding our screens and public spaces, restaurants offering GLP-1-friendly menus, and providers restructuring care models around their use.
About 12% of U.S. adults are now estimated to be taking GLP-1 medications since they burst onto the scene a few years ago, marking one of the fastest drug adoption curves in modern medicine. But as this use accelerates, a question is emerging in clinical circles: are these therapies being measured in the right way?
For many patients using these drugs, success is still defined by the number on the scale. But some healthcare experts say this is an imperfect proxy that can miss crucial changes in fat mass and muscle preservation.
That’s why telehealth clinic Hone Health teamed up with BodySpec, a startup that provides imaging for body fat & muscle analysis. Under their partnership, which launched this month, Hone patients taking GLP-1s will get access to DEXA (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) body composition scans as part of their care.
The goal is to give more people access to clinical-grade body composition data, said BodySpec CEO Elaine Shi.
“In a world where virtual care has made bloodwork, coaching and prescriptions much more accessible, people are still often judging progress on a consumer scale at home — and that is a very blunt instrument. It can tell you that your weight changed, but not whether you lost fat, lost muscle or changed something important about your health,” she explained.
In her view, one of the biggest problems in healthcare is that providers often rely on incomplete signals.
A patient might see their weight drop and assume everything is on track, but weight alone doesn’t tell whether that loss is coming from fat or from lean muscle mass. A body composition scan makes that visible, which means the goal can become much more specific — not just losing weight, but losing fat while preserving muscle, Shi said.
The scan allows the provider to tailor the plan accordingly, whether that means a greater focus on protein, adding resistance training or other strategies for sustainable metabolic health.
“Better data helps patients and clinicians move from guessing based on proxies to making decisions based on what is actually happening in the body,” Shi declared.
Patients can purchase their BodySpec scan directly in Hone’s app. They can undergo their scans at one of BodySpec’s locations, which span 12 metro areas across the U.S., including Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Boston and Seattle. The company also has a fleet of 22 vans that serve as mobile DEXA scan clinics.
As GLP-1 use continues to scale, Shi believes partnerships like this reflect a shift toward measuring outcomes in terms of body composition rather than weight alone. And for many patients, that shift could determine whether these drugs deliver on their long-term promise.
Photo: THOM LEACH / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, Getty Images
