Mayo clinic bmi calculator professional#

What's disturbing is that the inspiration for Dr. On the flip side, a fair amount (over 30%) of people considered healthy by the BMI actually had concerning results in terms of cholesterol, blood pressure, or insulin resistance. WhatвЂ™s more, 47% of those considered overweight were healthy, too. Quite a lot indeed: Almost 30% of participants considered obese by the BMI were actually totally healthy based on their biomarkers. вЂњHow many of those folks who are considered unhealthy by BMI standards are actually perfectly healthy based on these markers?вЂќ she asks. Tomiyama and her team matched up participantsвЂ™ BMI numbers with biomarkers such as cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and insulin resistance. Using data from a nationally-representative survey, Dr. On top of that, BMI - and weight in general - doesn't always match up with other, more accurate measures of health, a recent study authored by Dr.

These perfectly healthy people - heavy with muscle rather than fat - often appear unhealthy by BMI standards.

Mayo clinic bmi calculator professional#

The most obvious case is that of professional athletes. In fact, as a new study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings suggests, on that scale, it may even be more accurate at predicting health problems in a group of people than body fat percentage.Д«ut when you zoom in to look at each individual patient, the story can change dramatically, depending on the person. On top of that, BMI truly is useful as a measure when you're looking at a large set of data. And because it's so quick, cheap, and anyone can do it, it's an obvious choice for researchers on the hunt for data. вЂњItвЂ™s two numbers - weight and height - so anyone can get their number without training,вЂќ she says.

The best thing about the BMI is that itвЂ™s easy, explains Janet Tomiyama, PhD, an assistant professor of health psychology at UCLA. In a 1972 study, he found that QueteletвЂ™s calculation was the best of a bad bunch of measures that had been created to approximate patientsвЂ™ body fat percentage. The formula that became the BMI was originally devised by Adolphe Quetelet in the early 1800s in an effort to quantify the вЂњideal man.вЂќ He wasnвЂ™t especially interested in obesity, but long after QueteletвЂ™s death, another researcher - Ancel Keys - really was. What you might not know about BMI is that it's actually more than 200 years old.