![]() This explains why muscular athletes often have high B.M.I.s despite having little body fat. can’t tell, for instance, what percentage of a person’s weight is from their fat, muscle or bone. Yoni Freedhoff, an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa.ī.M.I. Does it accurately describe individual health?įor all its utility as a research tool, though, body mass index is “fairly useless when looking at the individual,” said Dr. is also easy and inexpensive to measure, which is why it is still used in research studies and doctor’s offices today. It also has a “J-shaped” relationship with mortality very low and very high B.M.I.s are associated with greater risk of dying sooner, whereas the “normal” to “overweight” range is associated with lower mortality risk.Īs Dr. On average, people with a higher body mass index have more body fat, so it can be useful for tracking rates of obesity, which have nearly tripled globally over the last several decades. is generally associated with greater risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer, she said. Research has shown that across large groups of people, higher B.M.I. JoAnn Manson, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “It is a very useful tool in epidemiologic research,” said Dr. Keys and his colleagues showed that the body mass index was a more accurate - and far simpler - predictor of body fat than the methods used by the insurance industry. In a 1972 study of more than 7,000 healthy, mostly middle-aged men, Dr. Keys was irritated that life insurance companies were estimating people’s body fat - and hence, their risk of dying - by comparing their weights with the average weights of others of the same height, age and gender. Introduced in the 1830s by a Belgian statistician who wanted to quantitatively describe the “average man,” the calculation was named the body mass index and popularized in the 1970s by the Minnesota physiologist Ancel Keys. And, in fact, some said they would indeed call it a scam. was a very useful measure of a person’s health. But after talking with an epidemiologist, two obesity medicine physicians, a health psychologist and a sociologist, none claimed that B.M.I. ![]() Many feel judged by these categories, given that only about a quarter of adults in the United States can call themselves “normal” on the B.M.I. The result, which slots you into one of four main categories, is meant to describe your body in a single word or two: underweight (B.M.I. Its formula is simple: Take your weight (in kilograms), and divide by the square of your height (in meters). We encounter it not just at doctor’s offices, but with online calculators and smart scales, at gyms and even when determining eligibility for the Covid vaccine. There are few single measures in health care that seem to carry as much weight as body mass index, or B.M.I.
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