Health officials use various measurements to try to gauge a person’s health, with body mass index (BMI) being one of them. For those who do not know, BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight.
Body mass index as a measurement got its start all the way back in 1832 when Adolphe Quetelet invented the Quetelet Index (weight divided by height squared). Then, in the 1950s, Louis I. Dublin built on Quetelet’s concept and came up with his own tables to try to categorize people based on their body frames.
In 1972 physiologist Ancel Keys created the modern-day body mass index as we now know it (and coined the term). The official formula to calculate BMI is:
weight (pounds) / [height (in)]2 x 703
It doesn’t take a doctor, statistician, or biologist to quickly figure out the limitations of BMI as a standard measure of health. But rather than offer up my opinion on the matter, I will turn to the folks at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for some of BMI’s limitations:
- It may overestimate body fat in athletes and others who have a muscular build.
- It may underestimate body fat in older persons and others who have lost muscle.
Any time someone tries to apply a one-size-fits-all approach to measuring health they are doomed to fail. Human biology is more nuanced than statisticians like Adolphe Quetelet and Louis Dublin want it to be.
A team of researchers in Zurich and Leipzig (Switzerland and Germany, respectively) recently conducted a study that may be more useful for measuring overall health and trying to anticipate if someone is at risk of developing metabolic diseases. The researchers created an ‘atlas of cells in fat tissue’ that may ‘explain why some overweight people stay healthy, while others do not.’
“Our results can be used to look for cellular markers that provide information on the risk of developing metabolic diseases,” explains Adhideb Ghosh, a researcher in ETH Professor Christian Wolfrum’s group and one of the two lead authors of the study. “The data is also of great interest for basic research. It could help us develop new therapies for metabolic diseases.”
BMI as a measurement may work for some people, but be a virtually useless measurement for other people. Those of us who have endomorph body types should be particularly skeptical of the results of BMI measurements.
As always, talk to your doctor if you have questions about your overall health. They can perform a comprehensive physical examination and conduct various tests to give you a proper idea of where your health is at.
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