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Body Mass Index

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 The body mass index is an advance from the older and less meaningful height and weight charts. And is the current tool used by health and insurance agencies to assess body weight and degree of obesity. However, it does not allow for individual variation of muscle mass and bone structure. 


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Although body mass index (BMI) has been adopted by WHO as an international measure of obesity, it lacks a theoretical basis, and empirical evidence suggests it is not valid for all populations.1 The body mass index (BMI) does not accurately represent the amount of [body] fat,"2
The BMI has been around since the 1840s, but it has a number of weaknesses. Firstly, it doesn't give a real estimate of percentage body fat. Secondly, the BMI can be quite different for a man and a woman with the same percentage of body fat. And thirdly, your BMI can be high even if you don't have much fat, especially if you are male and very muscular. It turned out that hip circumference and height are more correlated with percentage body fat than anything else, including waist circumference and weight. The Body Adiposity Index. is a good predictor of percentage adiposity, so if your BAI is 30, then your percentage body fat is around 30 per cent. It is reasonably accurate - not terribly accurate - but usable as a clinical tool. It appears to be a better tool than BMI, yet research is still necessary before it can be used confidently. Unlike BMI, the BAI for men and women is the same if they have the same percentage body fat. It has been validated the BAI in African American populations. Its utility has not been confirmed in Caucasian subjects, although it has been tested it on a small group and it seems to fit. The real challenge is to be able to predict the risk of obesity-related diseases such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension, and then to intervene. It remains to be shown that BAI is a more useful predictor of these outcomes than other measures of body adiposity.3

To calculate both BMI and BAI for comparison, please visit  http://www.intmath.com/functions-and-graphs/bmi-bai-comparison.php

1. Bagust A, Walley T. An alternative to body mass index for standardizing body weight for stature. QJM 2000;93((9)):589-96.
2.Richard N. Bergman, Keck Professor of Medicine at the University of California's Keck School of Medicine. http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=139331
3. Richard Bergman.http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928030.200-obesity-expert-a-better-fat-measure-than-bmi.html

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