BMI Fact or Fiction

For a long time now BMI has been used as a indicator as regard to health, but now this is being put under question, as to exactly how accurate it is or isn't, a lot of researchers are beginning to think something else may be needed to replace this particular method of measuring people's health, the problem with this method of assessing peoples body mass, is it doesn't take into account people's overall body composition whether they have either more muscle mass or fat mass, without actually measuring these two things it is harder to know if in fact your body mass is correct or not.

Scientists at the Mayo Clinic which is in Rochester, saying that BMI is not all it's cracked up to be, they took data from 40 different studies which involved 250 hundred thousand participants who were known to have heart disease, the people who were very obese would have a higher mortality rate.

It was found that people who were overweight as regards to BMI, were far less likely to have heart problems as opposed to those who had a normal BMI. One of the things that was said is it depends where the accumulation of fat is,if it is around the abdominal area and if there is too much fat there, then that is where it needs to be lost most.

If you have a tape measure a good rule of thumb is to measure your waist size, for men if you have a waist size of over 40 inches, and for women 35 inches, then your risk of cardiovascular disease is higher, there is a increased risk of other diseases.

With a waist of over 32 inches for women and 37 inches for men diabetes is probably more likely within this range. The only other thing you can do to yourself is go to your local gym and have your body fat checked with callipers, or another alternative is to get some body fat scales these will send a current through your body when you have muscle that will conduct but fat acts as a resistance this is how the scales workout your overall body fat.

Via http://www.guardian.co.uk