Showing posts with label BMI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BMI. Show all posts

Oct 26, 2019

BMI Facts

Seems to me that if the majority, 71.6% are overweight according to the arbitrary BMI number, then the number needs to be updated to reflect the new norm. According to BMI, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rock are obese.

Percent of adults aged 20 and over with overweight, including obesity: 71.6% (2015-2016) - latest from National Center for Health Statistics

The overall prevalence of obesity was higher among black and Hispanic adults than among non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic Asian adults.


Obesity is defined as the BMI was calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared, rounded to one decimal place. Obesity in adults was defined as a BMI of greater than or equal to 30.

Jan 11, 2019

Body Mass Index (BMI) Origin

Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (pronounced Ket-eh-lay) was born into a middle-class family on February 22, 1796. He was a mathematician, astronomer, statistician, poet, dramatist, and one of the founders of sociology. Quetelet believed society could be analyzed without bias using statistics. He described this new academic field as social physics, believing it would reveal important patterns in human society. In 1832, Quetelet discovered in his mountains of data a relationship between height and weight in adults. “The weights of individuals of different height are nearly like the square of their height.” In 1972, the American physiologist Ancel Keys formed the view that the Quetelet Index was the best way to identify obese individuals and gave it a new name – the body mass index.

In 1985, the U.S. National Institutes of Health adopted the body mass index or BMI as a means of identifying underweight and overweight individuals. He died age 77 on February 17, 1874.

Oct 5, 2018

What is BMI

BMI is the two-digit number that medical professionals use to determine how expansive your butt is. Anything higher than 30 means you are obese. BMI is a simple formula calculated based on height and weight.

It was created by the World Health Organization's International Obesity Task Force (IOTF). During 1997, following two years of study, the IOTF lowered the "overweight" cutoff to 25 from its previous value of 27. As a general rule, anyone attempting to define a human being in two digits leaves much to be desired.

A new study finds that about 54 million Americans who are labeled as obese or overweight according to their body mass index are actually healthy.
Body mass index is calculated by dividing a person's weight by the square of the person's height. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a "healthy" BMI is 18.5 to 24.9, an overweight BMI is 25 to 29.9 and an obese BMI is 30 or higher. 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. According to his BMI, 34.3, the Dwayne The Rock Johnson is obese.

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 do not meet 24 health criteria, which include meeting a specific BMI. If BMI does not accurately reflect health, then those with high numbers 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.
They found that 47.4%, of overweight people and 29% of obese people were, from a metabolic standpoint, quite healthy. They also found more than 30% of individuals with "normal" weights were metabolically unhealthy.

Their results showed that using BMI as the primary indicator of health means that 74.9 million adults in the United States are being mis-categorized as healthy or unhealthy. That includes the 34.4 million people who are considered overweight and the 19.8 million people considered obese, according to BMI.

Sep 26, 2014

Overweight Defined

During 1998, twenty nine million Americans suddenly became overweight without gaining an ounce. The US government announced new guidelines lowering the threshold of what classifies a person as overweight.

Previously, if your body mass index (BMI) was less than 28 for men or 27 for women, you were considered 'normal'. Since then only BMIs of 25 or below are considered healthy. That was a reduction of about 20 pounds for the average male. BMI is a ratio of weight to height, and is considered an indicator of how much body fat a person has.

Nov 1, 2013

BMI and Life Expectancy

A comprehensive review published in 2013 in the 'Journal of the American Medical Association' examined the relationship of BMI (Body Mass Index) to death rates. The study researchers found that increasing levels of obesity were associated with progressively higher premature death rates.

Mildly obese people, however, did not have a significantly greater risk of death compared to those with a normal BMI. In fact, the finding that people classified as overweight but not obese had a lower overall death rate compared to those with a normal BMI. Researchers are exploring possible reasons for this finding.

The 'International Journal of Obesity' published a study in 2012 comparing BMI and waist circumference as predictors of life expectancy. The authors reported that waist circumference is a better predictor of death from any cause than BMI. The researchers also found that adults with a high waist circumference had an increased risk of death regardless of BMI. Although neither BMI nor waist size can accurately foretell the life expectancy of any individual, waist circumference may be a better tool for estimating longevity. In other words, they are saying 'we cannot accurately tell life expectancy with either of these measurements, but it does help get us grants and headlines'.

Feb 12, 2013

Sperm Study

Here is another of those studies that makes us wonder who thinks up this stuff. The British Journal of Sports Medicine, looked at the lifestyles of 189 healthy men between the ages of 18 and 22, during a three-month period to establish a link between environmental factors and semen quality. Its finding - men who watch more than 20 hours of television a week risk halving their sperm count.

It said, while regular, vigorous exercise was shown to boost sperm count, excessive television-watching can counteract the positive effects of physical activity and can have a major impact on a man’s ability to reproduce.

Another study by researchers at the University of Sheffield and Manchester compared the lifestyles of 939 men with poor sperm quality with 1,310 men with normal sperm quality. It found “little evidence” that a high BMI, excessive alcohol consumption or recreational drugs were contributing factors to sperm quality. It also found that wearing boxer shorts rather than tighter underwear was linked to higher sperm levels. There was even evidence that high levels of physical activity might have a detrimental effect on quality and quantity.

Dr George Chavarro from the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School at Public Health, senior author of the recent study said, “In general, very little is known about what influences sperm count.”  Too bad for us their fathers didn't watch more TV.