![]() Meanwhile, 31 percent of normal-weight people were unhealthy by two or more of the same measures. It found that 47 percent of people classified as overweight by BMI and 29 percent of those who qualified as obese were healthy as measured by at least five of those other metrics. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and assessed their health as measured by six accepted metrics, including blood pressure, cholesterol and C-reactive protein (a gauge of inflammation). A study by researchers at UCLA published this month in the International Journal of Obesity looked at 40,420 adults in the most recent U.S. Taken alone as an indicator of health, the BMI is misleading. “When we have a measurement that doesn’t really differentiate those who have excess fat, it’s useless.” But among those who are overweight or normal weight by BMI, the measurement tool fails, he said. Yes, when someone’s BMI is very high, it’s very likely that he is carrying extra fat, said Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, director of preventive cardiology at the Mayo Clinic. ![]() 1 Weight includes fat, but it also includes bones, muscle, fluids and everything else in the body. But the BMI is a function of a person’s weight and height. The goal of using any obesity indicator should be to identify people with excess fat, since that fat has been associated with bad health outcomes. There are other metrics that do a much better job of identifying these people - all we have to do is measure some hips and waists. It’s those people who may walk around thinking they’re perfectly healthy when instead they’re at higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and premature death. And a growing pile of research shows that it misses another category of people: those who are carrying a few extra pounds or who are even normal weight according to their BMI but who have too much fat in a particularly dangerous place. It can incorrectly flag the athletic or particularly muscular as overweight, for one. If you want to know whether you may be overweight, you’ve likely confronted your BMI, or body mass index, to see where you fall on the spectrum of “underweight” to “obese.” The BMI, created in the 1800s by Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet and adopted during the late 20th century, has become the way governments, drug manufacturers, physicians and us would-be dieters measure obesity, or the lack thereof.īut BMI can go wrong.
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