Why using BMI alone to make health conclusions can be misleading
Introduction:
- India is regarded as one of the least obese countries in the world, with a BMI of under 22.According to BMI, a popular statistic used to evaluate fitness and fat, the majority of Indians are regarded to be in good health.
- But type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and excessive cholesterol levels are now more common in Indians than ever.
- Experts provide a “ticking time bomb” warning regarding obesity.
BMI:
- The contradiction is contained in the BMI, a simple formula that calculates a person’s weight in kilogrammes by the square of their height in metres.
- The fitness myths that are most frequently believed are that “the lower your BMI, the healthier you are” and “obesity only occurs when you don’t eat right or exercise regularly.” Both assertions are untrue and misleading.
- BMI is one approach to keep track of your weight and identify any potential weight-related problems. Similar to a quick antigen test for COVID-19, it might help with screening for chronic health conditions, but it can’t ensure an RT-PCR test’s correctness.
A biased result:
- Around 200 years ago, Belgian statistician and astronomer Adolphe Jacques Quetelet set out to study humans and develop “social laws” that were comparable to the laws of physics.
- Using the height and weight of middle-aged Caucasian men from France and Scotland, he studied the data sets that were available to establish what the “average man” was.
- The Queletet’s Index, the precursor to the BMI, was intended to be a population-level tool solely and was not to be applied to an individual. It helped to pinpoint a particular kind of excellence.
A challenging science:
- Since then, some people have re-examined the BMI idea in light of mounting evidence.
- The inability of BMI to distinguish between body fat and muscle mass is one of its flaws.
- They have a lower BMI than those with larger body frames or athletes, who typically lose muscle mass as they age since muscle and bone weigh more and are denser than fat.
- By attempting to correlate mortality with obesity, BMI recklessly conflates correlation with causation.
- Obesity does not always result from having a high BMI, even if it is true that persons who are overweight have high BMIs.
- The definition of “fat” in science is always evolving. It is commonly known that having too much body fat increases your risk of developing 13 different types of cancer as well as non-communicable diseases including type 2 diabetes and heart issues.
- In a study that was published in the journal Science, it was shown that people who are “obese” (defined as having a BMI of 30 or higher) have lower cardiovascular risks while people who are “normal” are metabolically unhealthy and are more likely to die. The “obesity mortality paradox” was the name given to this discovery.
Other info:
- There are at least 59 distinct forms of obesity, therefore using one measurement of “body fat” is problematic.
- The metric also only takes into account self-reported height and weight, neglecting other variables including sex, age, genetic variations, muscle mass, bone density, and muscularity. The study was published in the International Journal of Obesity.
- Poverty and level of education are social factors that influence obesity and weight.
- Additionally, there are racial and ethnic variances in body fat. For instance, Asian Indians encounter the Y-Y paradox, which states that while having a similar BMI to Europeans, we have higher levels of visceral fat.
- According to studies, Indians are more prone to gain belly fat, which increases their risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
- A low BMI is recommended for Indians’ health, according to the WHO, as a high BMI overestimates health risks for or for South Asians.
Conclusion:
- On June 14 of this year, the American Medical Association (AMA) admitted that the BMI technique of assessing body fat was inaccurate since it fails to account for differences in racial/ethnic groupings, sexes, genders, or age ranges and has historically led to harm.
- The AMA’s vote supported the opinion of experts and campaigners who have long maintained that BMI is inaccurate, discriminatory, and deflects attention from important health issues such as the rising incidence of non-communicable diseases.
