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Why BMI may be the worst way to measure your health
Do you know your BMI?
Let’s back up even further. Do you even know what “BMI” stands for?
Close to 100 years ago, a Belgian astronomer and mathematician developed this easy-to-calculate ratio between a person’s height and weight.
Over the years, the resulting number has become the “gold standard” in determining whether someone is overweight and, subsequently, how healthy or unhealthy they are.
It’s become an accepted measuring stick for a person’s chances of living a long, healthy life, or of dying young.
Today, researchers are questioning whether this one measure is really the “be all and end all” when it comes to telling someone how healthy or unhealthy they are.
Let’s take a look at how things are shifting, and at how you can determine the true state of your health more accurately.
Body mass index: Does ‘weight x height’ tell us enough?
BMI stands for body mass index. The formula is fairly simple. Take your weight in pounds, multiply it by 703, and divide that number by your height in inches, squared.
For example, I weigh 126 pounds and stand 62 inches tall. So, 126 x 703 is 88,758. When I divide that by 622, or 3,844, I get a BMI of 23.09, which puts me in the “normal” range for my BMI.
According to most criteria accepted around the world:
- A BMI of 18.49 or below means a person is underweight.
- A BMI of 18.5 to 24.99 means they are of normal weight.
- A BMI of 25 to 29.99 means they are overweight.
- A BMI of 30 or more means they are obese.
But it’s pretty clear that this information alone isn’t nearly enough to predict health outcomes. And it’s precisely this fact that both statisticians and health professionals have begun to address in the past few years.
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Not a “magic number” for predicting longevity
Within the last three years, two major studies have questioned the usefulness of this rather arbitrary measure.
In 2016, using data from the most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) analyzed the link between BMI and several other health “markers” including blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol.
When “health” was looked at in these broader terms, more than 2 million people identified as “very obese” according to their BMI were found to be healthy in all other respects.
On the other hand, more than 30 percent of people with BMIs in the “normal” range were actually quite unhealthy based on those other health measures.
Jeffrey Hunger, a doctoral student at UCSB and one of the paper’s lead authors, noted the flaw in using BMI as a sole indicator of health.
“Not only does BMI mislabel 54 million heavier individuals as unhealthy, it actually overlooks a large group of individuals considered to have a ‘healthy’ BMI who are actually unhealthy when you look at underlying clinical indicators.”
Many U.S. companies use employees’ BMI as a factor in determining their health insurance costs. According to Hunger, this would mean that a healthy but overweight person would be asked to pay higher premiums than their lightweight but very unhealthy counterpart.
‘Overweight’ isn’t always the same as ‘unhealthy’
When a team from Copenhagen University Hospital tracked 100,000 adults over more than four decades – from 1976 to 2013 – they found that BMI as a predictor of longevity is, to put it bluntly, flawed.
Over the four decades of this study, the “needle” moved. The body mass index of the people with the lowest risk of death increased from 23.7 – in the normal range – to 27, squarely in the “overweight” range.
Are we saying it’s OK to go eat ice cream three times a day and sit in front of the TV all weekend? Absolutely not! But it’s pretty clear that how long a person lives is far more complex a calculation than just their height and weight.
For one thing, we know that athletes and active people may fall into the “overweight” category, simply because muscle weighs more than fat.
The bottom line: Science and medicine are looking toward a more well-balanced approach to predicting health and longevity.
But maintaining a “healthy” weight, one you can feel good about and that lets you enjoy life and stay active, is still something you want to achieve.
With so many diets and eating plans out there, it can be confusing. But here’s one diet pretty much anyone can feel good about. It’s a simple, flexible, common-sense approach to eating we think you’ll enjoy.
And, if you’re still thinking about an alternative to BMI as a way to tell how healthy you are, read what Dr. Adria Schmedthorst has to say about a better way to take stock of your body fat.
Sources:
- The Healthiest Weight Could Actually Be ‘Overweight’, Huge Study Finds — ScienceAlert
- Some 54 Million ‘Overweight’ or ‘Obese’ Americans Are Actually Healthy, Say Scientists — ScienceAlert
- A Flawed Measure — The UCSB Current
- How useful is the body mass index (BMI)? — Harvard Health Blog
- How useful is body mass index (BMI)? — Medical News Today
- Calculate BMI — BMI Calculator USA
By Joyce Hollman
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