For years, doctors and dieticians have been using a person’s body mass index, or BMI, as a magic number that defines a person’s link to obesity and related health conditions later in life, such as diabetes and heart issues. However, doctors now think they have found a less-flawed physical ratio that can better indicate the pitfalls that await a person who could stand to lose a few pounds. Dr. Arthur Caplan is a professor of bioethics at NYU Langone; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to explain why BMI may no longer be the standard, and what might be in the not-too-distant future.
“The body mass index, that’s a measure that doctors and dieticians use to decide whether you’re too heavy or obese,” Dr. Caplan told Berman and Riedel. “Everybody has been looking at this thing and saying, you know, it doesn’t really predict who’s really in trouble with weight because it doesn’t account for the weight of muscle… so, new measure- body roundness index, BRI. What’s that mean? How round is your tummy. It’s abdominal fat, particularly the roundness of the gut, how big is your waist relative to your height, that seems to be predictive of health problems, diabetes, whatever.”
Dr. Caplan expanded on the reasoning behind why anyone should keep track of their waist line in the first place, particularly as they get older. “Men and women both tend to start storing a little bit more fat as they age; however, you can handle that with just keeping an eye on the diet, cut back on the sugar. It’s not abnormal to have a little bit more there, so you could be, let’s call it, ‘round-adjusted’. If you’re like 65, 70, and you’ve got a little bit of a gut, I don’t think that’s quite the same as if you’re 25 and have a 52-inch waist; you’ve got trouble there.”
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