More on BMI Study
I thought this Wall Street Journal article about the JAMA study on Body Mass Index (BMI), Is Being Overweight Healthy?, was interesting though it didn’t address the reasons why higher BMI might be protective (as discussed in my original post).
A Good Way to Measure Obesity? Fat Chance
Excerpt:
“For instance, according to his BMI, one numbers-savvy researcher is overweight—a finding he rejects. “As a 6’3″ swimmer, I find myself falling in the lower part of the overweight category even though my body-fat percentage is very low and no one would say I was overweight,” said David Dunson, a biostatistician at Duke University. He said he knows athletes who lose muscle, not fat, when they fall off their exercise regimen, and then are counterintuitively reclassified from overweight to normal weight.
“It is hard to say how many people are misclassified by BMI. Steven Heymsfield, executive director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, an NIH-funded institution in Baton Rouge, La., who co-wrote a commentary accompanying the JAMA study, estimated about 5% to 10% of the U.S. population may be ill-served by BMI.”
Ginny Messina also wrote about it:
Weight, Health and Vegans…plus the Fabulous Our Hen House Magazine
Excerpt:
“The perspective that is gaining support is one that points away from the scale, and toward healthy habits that are sustainable—that is, habits that not only support health, but that also don’t leave you feeling hungry and deprived.”