You may be aware of the term BMI which is a person’s body mass index. It’s been used to determine if a person, based on dividing the person’s weight and height, fits into one of four categories – underweight, normal, overweight or obese.
The CDC now states that using BMI doesn’t diagnose the body fatness or the health of an individual.
The key words here are it won’t tell you a person’s health.
Some of the ways BMI doesn’t work is it puts men and women, regardless of age and genetic factors, into one of these four categories. It was also based on research of mostly white European and American men.
A study in JAMA found that for Black people having a higher BMI was actually healthier for them. Other studies have found that people of East Asian And South Asian descent with lower BMIs tended to have higher rates of diabetes.
The BMI also doesn’t take into account the difference between a person’s fat and muscle mass, which is denser than fat, plus, muscle also weights more. This means an athlete may be labeled overweight while an elderly person, who has lost a lot of their muscle mass, may be labeled normal.
If BMI is on its way out what will the docs use instead? It turns out that they have plenty of tools available to them. These tools include blood pressure, resting heart rate, insulin resistance, inflammatory markers, sleep hygiene, eating behaviors, mental health and food security.
Dr. Elizabeth Wassenaer put it succinctly, “BMI harms our ability to truly understand what factors might impact disease and how (physicians) might support people in living healthier, more fulfilled lives.”
So…it’s simple - bye, bye BMI!
Reported Prevention, July 2022
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