Over the past couple of years, body mass index, a ratio of a person's height and weight, has efficiently become a proxy for whether a person is thought about healthy. Numerous U.S. business utilize their employees' BMIs as a factor in figuring out employees' health care expenses. And people with greater BMIs might soon need to pay greater health insurance premiums, if a rule proposed in April by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is embraced.
But a brand-new study led by UCLA psychologists has discovered that utilizing BMI to determine health improperly identifies more than 54 million Americans as "unhealthy," despite the fact that they are not. The scientists' findings are released online today in the International Journal of Obesity.
" Many people see obesity as a death sentence," said A. Janet Tomiyama, an assistant professor of psychology in the UCLA College and the research study's lead author. "But the information reveal there are 10s of millions of individuals who are overweight and overweight and are completely healthy."
The researchers analyzed the link in between BMI-- which is computed by dividing an individual's weight in kgs by the square of the person's height in meters-- and several health markers, consisting of high blood pressure and cholesterol, glucose and triglyceride levels, using data from the most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
The research study found that close to half of Americans who are considered "overweight" by virtue of their BMIs (47.4 percent, or 34.4 million individuals) are healthy, as are 19.8 million who are considered "overweight.".
Given their health readings besides BMI, the people in both of those groups would be not likely to sustain higher medical costs, and it would be unfair to charge them more for health care premiums, Tomiyama said.
Amongst the other findings:.
- More than 30 percent of those with BMIs in the "normal" variety-- about 20.7 million people-- are actually unhealthy based upon their other health data.
- More than 2 million individuals who are considered "very overweight" by virtue of having a BMI of 35 or greater are in fact healthy. That's about 15 percent of Americans who are classified as really obese.
Tomiyama, who directs UCLA's Dieting, Stress and Health laboratory, likewise called DiSH, discovered in previous research that there was no clear connection between weight reduction and health enhancements associated with diabetes, cholesterol, and hypertension and blood sugar levels.
She stated she was amazed at the magnitude of the numbers in the current study.
" There are healthy people who could be penalized based upon a faulty health measure, while the unhealthy people of regular weight will fly under the radar and will not get charged more for their medical insurance," she stated. "Employers, policy makers and insurance provider should concentrate on actual health markers.".
Jeffrey Hunger, a co-author of the paper and a doctoral candidate at UC Santa Barbara, stated the research shows that BMI is a deeply flawed step of health. "This must be the final nail in the coffin for BMI," he said.
Cravings recommends that individuals focus on eating a healthy diet and working out frequently, rather than consuming about their weight, and highly opposes stigmatizing individuals who are overweight.
The proposed EEOC rule would permit companies to charge higher insurance rates to individuals whose BMI is 25 or greater. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.99 is considered normal, however the research study stresses that normal BMI needs to not be the primary objective for maintaining health.
Tomiyama is preparing a new study of people with high BMIs who are extremely healthy. Potential participants may contact her lab for more information.
Co-authors of the International Journal of Obesity study are Jolene Nguyen-Cuu, supervisor of Tomiyama's laboratory, and Christine Wells, a UCLA statistical analyst.