Posted on 02/06/2016 3:50:42 PM PST by BenLurkin
Good news for some in the high-BMI crowd: A new study from UCLA finds that some 54 million Americans who are labeled as obese or overweight according to their body mass index are, when you take a closer look, actually healthy.
The findings, published in the International Journal of Obesity, reveal that employers could potentially saddle people with unfairly high health insurance costs based on a deeply flawed measure of actual health.
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Body mass index is calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by the square of the person's height in meters. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a "healthy" BMI is 18.5-24.9, an overweight BMI is 25-29.9 and an obese BMI is 30 or higher. The calculation has been seen as a slightly more nuanced way to measure health than weight alone.
But over time, researchers have begun to suspect that people with so-called "healthy" BMIs can be very unhealthy, and those with high BMIs can actually be in very good shape.
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That would be a pretty big deal, especially since the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently proposed rules that would allow employers to penalize employees for up to 30% of their health insurance costs if they don't meet 24 health criteria - which include meeting a specific BMI. If body mass index doesn't accurately reflect health, then those with high BMIs potentially could be overcharged for no reason.
To find out whether BMI correlated with actual markers of health, a team of UCLA researchers analyzed data from 40,420 individuals who participated in the 2005-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They looked at individuals’ blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterol, glucose, insulin resistance and C-reactive protein data - markers that are linked to heart disease and inflammation, among other issues.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
BMI is a joke. I’m a size 10 and I’m considered obese by that chart.
BMI - another place where consensus science led folks down the merry path. I quit paying attention to them when they changed the definition (1998) to make more folks obese and get bigger budgets. Hang that one on Clinton, not Bush II.
I’m 6’4” and 210. I went to the doctor yesterday and the weigh me with my coat on, my cell phone, my key chain, my knife, my boots, etc... 240 pounds.
It also mislabels millions of people as unhealthy, and millions of unhealthy people, healthy, based only on weight to height ratio.
It is the stupidest metric out there, and it has panicked so many people needlessly. And it is an example of “science” at its absolute worst.
When they changed it overnight 11 million people, by doing nothing, became overweight.
Weight/Height^3 would work, but Weight/Height^2 does not.
Can you translate that? What does the character ^ mean?
To the power of. In other words squared and cube.
Bodies have volume. Volume is a cubic measurement. A six foot tall body has eight times the volume of a three foot tall body. 2 to the power of three or two cubed is eight.
I used to lift weights and when in my prime, I was on the edge of my BMI labeling me being obese. I took no drugs, ate very little grains, minimized my sugar intake and drank alcohol infrequently; but I ate piles of meat, vegetables, and fruits. My body fat was so low that you could see the veins in my abdomen.
Your average non-professional athlete today (including high school students) carry much more muscle than professional athletes did 50 years ago.
Agreed. I work out with weights three times a week. My mother and grandmother never did.
LOL.
Same thing happened to me. I was weighed with a lot of extra stuff on me. The next day I had to go back to the doctor’s so I wore the skimpiest light weight clothes I could find. I lost 15 pounds in 16 hours! How’s that for a quick weight loss program!
I’m 72” and 180#. The Dr told me last week I was obese.
Yep. My grandpas didn't lift weights either.
All they did was lift forks full of hay and walk behind a plow and horse all day.
In their spare time they might have lifted a few rocks out of the field too, but no weights, no sir-ree.
Grandma didn't lift weights either, but she was know to crank a butter churn for hours at a time.
Most Americans are "obese" according to those charts which don't take into account the additional muscle mass of those that workout regularly.
BMI is absurd from the beginning - taking the position that men and women should have the same weight for a given height.........
Every muscular man is obese! What a farce!
The wonder is how in the world this stupid system has been foisted on the usually otherwise science-based medical world......
Hubby is 75, 5’10’ 175, he to is considered slightly obese.
I’m 5’ at 125, small boned, considered obese size 8 bottoms, 12 tops. Low end of my weight chart is 115 and I’m sick all the time.
No one takes factors like bone size into consideration. Or muscle mass, some of that is genetics some weight lifting.
I hear you. Neither of my grandparents or great grandparents or anyone that I’m aware of in my family were farmers.
Sorry, Americans do have a weight problem compared to most other countries. When in Italy a few years ago saw very few overweight people and most that I did see were American tourists. Same thing when in China.
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