Paula Brochu, associate professor in the College of Psychology at Nova Southeastern University who studies weight stigma, told Good Housekeeping: “One large study examined people’s cardiometabolic health across the BMI spectrum and found that nearly half of ‘over-weight’ people and nearly one-third of ‘obese’ people were metabolically healthy. Researchers estimated that nearly 75 million adults in the U.S. have their health misclassified on the basis of BMI.”
BMI does not consider a person’s body type. Which is determined by genetics. And a high BMI does not necessarily mean that people have a higher risk of dying. Brochu told Good Housekeeping: “Many people are surprised to learn that those who are ‘overweight’ have lower mortality risk than ‘normal’-weight people and that people who are ‘obese’ have the same mortality risk as ‘normal’-weight people.”
Treatment
But in the current health care system, people are still evaluated by their BMI category. And they’re even denied necessary treatments because of it. Brochu said: “If the person is fat, the doctor may diagnose weight as the problem, prescribe weight loss as the treatment and send them on their way without further diagnostic tests or treatments. But if the person is not fat, they are much more likely to receive scans and treatment for the knee pain at the time of the complaint.” This causes people who fall into the categories ‘overweight’ or ‘obese’ to be misdiagnosed and discourages them from seeking help in the future.
The Guardian reports that a lot of fat people are speaking up about being misdiagnosed because of their weight. This means that BMI as a measure of health could be life threatening for a lot of people.
Outdated
BMI is still used by a lot of healthcare professionals because it is an easy system to quickly calculate a person’s ‘health’. And because it has been used since the 1800s, it is a big part of the health care system. But a lot of professionals are steering away from the system. Brochu said: “It focuses on weight loss as a health outcome, and by and large weight loss is advocated at any cost, which often leads to harm. A focus on health rather than weight provides more support to patients of all sizes.”
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Source: The Guardian, Good Housekeeping | Image: Unsplash, Fuu J