Why Do We Use the BMI? History of the Body Mass Index
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- Опубликовано: 30 окт 2021
- The history of the BMI is… troubled, to say the least. As a health metric, it doesn’t really tell your doctor much information that they couldn’t get in other ways. So why is it still so popular?
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Is anyone else concerned that they didn't even include women in any of these measurements??? Like I'm supposed to weight the same as an average white man in the 19th century?? That doesn't make any sense
You hit the nail on the head there
JFC I hadn't even considered that. I've long been tired of being constantly stuck in and told I am in the overweight category even when I was swimming for at least an hour every other day while eating the same as I had been back when I wasn't exercising at all. I was fitting back into clothes that had gotten way too tight but nope, still overweight.
Genetics and nature put more adipose tissue on women than men, so even just looking at body fat would rate us as less healthy than men if it isn't accounted for right.
I still wish BMI would get thrown away. Gotta love it when private insurance companies get into medical care and skew things 🙄
Yep, like it doesn't matter how good your analysis is if your data is bunk. In an engineering class about designing stuff for people (so like chairs, tables, things meant to be used by many people) I learned that many companies used to (and some still do) use a data set of human sizes from the military from like the 70s. Which explains why many "adjustable" products aren't anywhere close to adjustable enough for the actual population. Like shocker, your data set was almost exclusively 20 year old extremely fit men, it's no surprise everyone else doesn't fit. Even ignoring weight entirely, this just ignores everyone shorter than like 5'6", aka still taller than the average height of women.
It totally ignore where the weight is, I’ve been told I was obese even though I had a very tiny waist. I had large chest and butt. I still consider that as my best weight.
@@waffles3629yeah, as a 5’3” woman I have a hard time using gym equipment. I can never get things adjusted for my short arms and legs--they are all clearly designed for taller men.
The second you said "American insurance companies came in" I knew we were in for something awful
Everything can be traced back to the shite medical insurance system. 😔
Life insurance companies were the first to adopt BMI as a predictor of mortality.
As opposed to other countries insurance companies?
Do you think yourself clever?
You mean companies were interested in life expectancy, not aesthetic appeal, that’s awful
@@GasPipeJimmyas opposed to state-funded healthcare
As a nursing student, they made us calculate our own BMI and a few people in my class - including myself - fell in the overweight or even obese categories depsite being perfectly healthy, some from bodybuilding and muscle mass, others pretty much just for being black. When we asked our teacher why we still had to learn such an innacurate mesure of health her answer was "because doctors will'... Hopefully doctors can figure out a better way to mesure health on an individual level sooner than later. Thanks for this great video, super informative!!
That’s a good story Beatrice, and I imagine a lot of people can relate to it.
Thank you for mentioning ethnicity. Different ethnicities tend to store fat differently. As a black woman, my fat is mostly in the lower region. This is a good thing because it's away from my vital organs.
Sure fatty
🤣🤣🤣
If you or your friends fell in the obese range you are NOT 'perfectly healthy', regardless of racial origin. Unless you're a professional bodybuilder, which is unlikely. You are likely developing problems which will make themselves apparent somewhere down the road. I know fat activists try to maintain the 'fat but fit' myth but that's all it is: a myth.
The other issue with BMIs is that they were more geared to male rather than female physiology from the outset onwards and so are not as good a health predictor for females.
As has been almost everything. When was the last time you visited a doctor's office and one of their anatomy posters featured a female person?
There are separate BMI charts for male and female.
user-dd5eh5lu3o the last time I was at the doctor's there were charts of male and females. 🤷♀️
@@user-dd5eh5lu3o Uh, last time I went? Every clinic I go to that has anatomy charts has female anatomy presented alongside male anatomy. And for what little it's worth, my anecdotes are worth a little more because I go to multiple doctors and frequently lol.
Which isn't to say there is a MASSIVE hole in medicine where women are underserved, just that your example is silly and inaccurate.
Many surgeons/hospitals require a very specific BMI for treatments. *Not* a good way of using BMI.
A friend of mine needed breast reduction surgery, and was forced to get a BMI below 25.
She was an average size M, but she lifted weights and her BMI was 27.
She had to stop lifting(!) and also go on a strict diet, to be able to get to 24,9 and have the surgery.
She was furious, but had no other option than to play along, in order to get the surgery paid for.
Afterwards she had her body composition checked at her gym, and her muscle mass has decreased, while her fat mass was higher than it was before she lost the weight. 😑😖
* If people are very obese, surgery can have added risks.
But here we are talking about using BMI
1. As the only metric, not looking at anything else she l about people's bodies and health
2. with a sharp cutoff at the arbitrary 25.
This is not incorrect though, as it is in accordance with research. BMI, as imperfect as it is, is still the most useful and objective tool for estimating someone's risk of adiposity related complications. Every guideline, be it ADA's, AHA's, American Bariatric Surgery Society's, etc, uses BMI as a necessary criteria for certain treatments, because, as flawed as it is, it remains the most objective parameter to calculate the risks and benefits associated with many medical interventions. Consequently, research either on new treatments or on the efficacy of old ones is based on BMI.
BMI is still used in pharmacology today. As medications are often calculated by weight, in people with high body fat this can lead to toxicity. As these people are underrepresented in clinical studies and there is a lack of study of how to best accurately dose such individuals, the BMI (or only slightly modified version) is often used to make those adjustments, which is inadequate. We owe it to people to do better. To question all our accumulated data for bias and do research into people that have been historically excluded and overlooked
There are studies looking at using body composition analysis to personalise chemotherapy treatment. It's a work in progress but it is happening!
The one time my BMI was in the “correct” range, I’d gone on a crash diet to fit into a dress for my friend’s wedding. I was underweight, had low BP, crashed potassium and iron levels, heartburn, and didn’t get my menstrual period for six months. The doctor put me on a gradual weight gain diet and I opted to let my cycle return naturally rather than take hormones. I gained thirty pounds and everything returned to normal including my nearly “obese” BMI.
As a physician I can tell you that we know BMI by itself is not a good indicator for health. Like anything (including lab results etc) by itself it doesn't mean anything. If someone comes with a low/high BMI the only thing is to figure out if there's anything else wrong and rule those things out. The biggest advantage to it and why we still use it today is because it's free, fast, and easy to calculate. It gives you a snapshot of a person's weight related to their height. Manage of a 30 BMI bodybuilder isn't the same as a 30 BMI pt w/ DM or a 30 BMI pt w/o any comorbids. Think of it as something with high sensitivity but low specificity. Sorry for rambling but I hope you understand what I'm trying to say. Stumbled onto you from Knowing Better. If you don't listen to it already I highly suggest the Bedside Rounds podcast!
Thanks for your insight and comment. I'm familiar with Bedside Rounds! Dr. Rodman is a great role model for those of us trying to communicate the history of medicine
That's exactly my thoughts. I'm no medic, just some guy with PhD in physics who is curious about biology/health, astronomy and other sciency stuff.
It's not the BMI problem it's the interpretation. Of course bodybuilder and obese person could have same BMIs but their health could be to-otaly different! So it's like with the most things: must be used rationally, with caution, and understanding the limitation of a single number. Even if it easy to calculate. It's just a starting point, no more.
I agree, but I am not a certified doctor, but I play futsal/football. football/futsal is unhealthier than it needs to be at a high BMI. Football it's a unhealthy sport.
I always gets confused about sensitivity and specificity
which one is false positive and which one is false negative?
@@NoNameAtAll2Sensitivity is the true positive rate, calculated by finding the number of true positives that a test method finds divided by the total number of actual positives. Specificity is the true negative rate, calculated by finding the number of true negatives that a test method finds divided by the total number of actual negatives. A test method with a high sensitivity rate but a low specificity rate accurately identifies a disease but a lot of false negatives, while a test method with a low sensitivity rate but high specificity rate accurately identifies the absence of a disease but with a lot of false positives.
The other problem is that the calculations for BMI quickly breaks down for taller people. It was created using a limited sample size both in terms of race but also in terms of height variation and it did not properly take that into account either. You will be hard pressed to find a person over around 6' that is not at least overweight according to BMI, even if physiologically they are underweight. And since the average height of people has increased so much over the past hundred years that has only made the statistical situation worse.
Back in high school I was just under the obese range of BMI but you could see my ribs. When I moved to college and changed doctors, before the first appointment based on the forms I had to fill out, he emailed me and recommended I get more exercise and loose weight, after meeting me he recommended I eat more. He still recommended more exercise.
Yep. Like a 6'2"/1.88m person I know would have to lose 80 pounds to get to the very top of the normal range. He would be ridiculously thin if he did that because he has a very wide frame.
Same for short people. When I used to work out, I had 22% body fat and wore a size 6, but I was over 150 pounds. According to my BMI, I wasn't just overweight- I was "obese".
fully agreed - I'm not ripped, but relatively muscular... wide shoulders, lean stomach... yet put me on a BMI chart and I show up as a lardo - for the reason you mention. The original BMI data set I had heard came from WWII enlistment stats - quite literally a group of people who grew up malnourished and went through the Great Depression... no doubt many would be small or very thin, when that's not what their genes would have expressed if they hadn't gone through hunger as children/teens. I only weigh 230, which is all bone, muscle, organs and flesh... only a little fat. Yet, old chart calls me a lardo. lol from this 6'2" definitely NOT obese person. :P
@@chouseificationBack then (until 1990) healthy was 20-28 and not 18.5-25 like now.
@@2adamast seriously, we're specifically talking about how broken the BMI method is due to statistics issues with original sample group, and you'd casually rattle off BMI numbers at me trying to make some point?
That's really really "odd" would be a polite way of saying it. Drano drinker would be another.
One other problem of using BMI at an individual level - it assumes everyone's extra weight comes from fat. A bodybuilder could be classified as obese according to BMI. I have seen people lose weight while getting a belly - they were losing muscle and putting on fat. According to their BMI their health was improving.
This was my first thought when he mentioned that BMI was assumed to be indicative of fat levels
Most people aren't body builders nor have the muscle mass to significantly affect their BMI.
It's usually very obvious whether someone has a high BMI from body building or fat. And the vast majority of the population are not bodybuilders.
@@TessaAvonlea"Thin-fat" is much more common than you think. It is common that average weight people have a high fat percentage without it being visible.
Often that fat is around the inner organs, which is the most dangerous place to have it.
So when using BMI as the *only* measure of health, a lot of average weight people are not getting proper healtcare, because they don't get informed about the risk of, or get checked for, excess abdominal fat.
@@SIC647 yep. Like according to BMI my mother is a perfect weight and my father is severely obese. Except neither is true.
I've got the opposite problem. I'm a white guy living in South Korea. My BMI is about 22. I've got 10% body fat. Every year when I get my health check, I'm listed as Obese because of my BMI. It's insane.
Woah. I'm trying to do the algebra and imagine what the parameters would have to be for that to make sense. Wild!
Lol I’m 5’7 and 200 pounds. I would say I have like 30 pounds of fat but the bmi tells me I am MORBIDLY obese lol
Come on, I'm a very fit 5'8" and 137 pounds, roughly a BMI of 22. If you're carrying 63 pounds more than I am, that's a BMI of 31.3. You're obese. There's no other way to say it. But not even close to morbidly obese, which starts at a BMI of 40.
@@paulmaxwell8851 That’s not necessarily true cause they can have a wider build or more muscle. My BMI tells me I’m morbidly obese but when I hike with my friends with less body fat they have to rest more than me. I’m not necessarily fit but I’m very very far from actually looking like someone who could be called morbidly obese. My health teacher even told me my bmi was bullshit.
@willissudweeks1050
I'm 5' 9" and 130 and have around 12% bf. If you're shorter and weigh more than 50% more, it's kind of doubtful that your bf% is only 3% higher (30/200= ~.15)
BMI as a measure of body fat screwed my chances of promotion in the Army, even though I maintained my post basic training weight. Small neck. 🙄
I went to a new doctor, who told me I was morbidly obese. I wear a size 10 (women's) and swim competitively. Definitely not obese.
Yeah. And petite women get really screwed. I'm 5 ft and 145 lbs. They say morbidly obese. No way!
@@2degucitasSo do us tall girls😭 According to the BMI I'm supposed to be somewhere in the 150-160 range. I'm 6'2 and 250,swim 3 times a week and have never had any problems other than genetically bad knees. But every time I get a new doc they immediate try to send me to their weight loss clinic. 🙄🙄🙃🙃
@@2degucitas At 5ft and 145lbs, your BMI would be 28.3, merely "overweight." Morbidly obese starts at about 205lbs for that height. Apparently, your doctor can't even apply the BMI scale correctly.
Oh, that's neat how you swim competively! I hope all goes well for you!
I was gifted a large frame (elbow&wrist ratios, jewelry shopping is a nightmare) and non-dystrophic myotonia. BMI is just cruel for the women in my family. I've only graced the high end of the normal range once, for about 3 months. My ribs were showing through the front of my sports bra and I got bruises on my arms from hitting my own hip bones.
My main concern is proper dosage of medication and anesthetics. Dentists usually have to stop partway through fillings to do a second round of injections for me. I try to hold out through the pain but they usually notice me crying or digging my nails into the chair.
I am very short, but on a wide frame (my mom lovingly refers to the women of our family as good, stocky dairy cows 🤭).
The one time my BMI was down to 23, I looked like I was starving, with protruding collar bones, scrawny arms and sunken in face.
I hovered around 24-25bmi all through high school when I was extremely active in sports - so right on the cusp of being 'overweight.' The one time in my adult life I was down around 20 bmi I looked like a walking skeleton - I've got a large frame, wide hips, etc. Now, I just don't even look at a scale - I probably have a few pounds I could lose but ultimately I want to be what's healthy for me. Sure it makes me cringe when I look at my notes on my medical chart, but I can still say I've hiked up multiple mountains this year, so I'd say I'm doing okay.
Yep. I lost weight during covid due to not working out and went from "overweight" (according to BMI) and fit, to "normal" weight with my hip bones and ribs sticking out and half of my strength.
There is also body shape for women. Thick thighs save lives. If you carry your weight on the lover part of your body it reduces the risk relative to other body shapes.
I know that I am "big-boned" because:
1. At 5 '6", and 141#, I look horribly underweight, every bone in my body sticks out as though I am starving.
2. My wrists are larger than the average man's wrist. My 6'3" husband's wrists are much smaller than mine.
3. I have feet which are best measured in Men's sized, and still have larger than a 6E width.
4. My mother was the shortest of all her siblings, standing at 6'0". My wrist was larger than hers.
According to those charts, I should be 137#. Nope, I tell you, I look deathly immatiated at 141#.
What does the # mean, the way you use it?
@@SIC647 not OP, but they're likely using it to mean pounds.
Woah. Hope it isn't rude of me to ask questions: Do you think you have finished growing in height? Are there any conditions people have said you might have leading to such large wrists/ feet/ bones? (final:) Do you think there was the potential for you growing up to end up taller than you are? Sounds like you come from a tall family (tall genes..?). Thanks for explaining an experience I'd never heard of before!
@SIC647 it is the old-fashioned way of saying "pounds". Today, as you probably know, it is a computer programming special character called "hashtag".
@shunkela oh, yes, I have been 5' 6" (5 feet, 6 inches or about 165 cm) since I was about 12 years old... at the time of my low body weight, I was 15; gained about 20 pounds. Then, when I was 18, I dropped weight again. Nothing but bone.
If doctors know bmi is inaccurate, why do they deny me testi g, diagnosis, and treatment of unrelated conditions because of my bmi?
Kinda reminds me of how IQ isn't really so much meant to be a way to determine whether individuals are smart but is more so meant to find outliers among a population to better shape education for their needs. IQ is specifically designed so that 100 will be the average with the original idea being that anyone who scores significantly above or below will have different educational needs, someone who scores below might need more help to catch up but someone who scores above probably also needs more attention in the form of more challenges. But then people started interpreting on an individual level and a ton of moralistic and racist ideas about intelligence got mixed up with it.
It was also originally designed for kindergartens, not meant to be used on the general population.
@@yeetghostrat yeah, like it was the original "is your kid ready for kindergarten?" test.
@@yeetghostrat Not even for kindergarten, it was developed by Wilhelm Stern around 1900 to gauge relative cognitive abilities of toddlers. It had little meaning for children over about 6 years old.
One of the first things we learned about BMI doing post grad sports science is that it’s not a good health indicator but it can be used for performance comparisons like with oxygen usage maximum. Also I was classified as underweight for a long time, the whole of my time playing high level sports, I’m now a “healthy weight” and am 5kg over what I played at an am significantly less fit and strong than I was then.
BMI is still used because it's baked into the "best standard practice" of the medical industry and individual doctors will be crucified by stepping out of those bounds. My physician was essentially threatened by our state licensing board. We have learned to speak in a sort of code, a mash of what he can, and cannot,, actually say, and me explaining to him what I know of the chemistry involved and what I plan on doing, and him either openly agreeing or standing mute.
Bro literally a saint
I have less than 5% fat, I way 225lbs and am 6'4". Every time I go to the doctor, they tell me I need to lose weight. I literally cannot lose any weight. BMI is so off I have no idea how it every came around.
My doctor doesn’t even discuss or reference the BMI index. She collects information from me specifically and makes recommendations based on that data.
A good doctor
But it IS used on an individual level, without looking at other factors. For example, in Sweden a cutoff of EXACTLY 30 (or in other regions exactly 35) is used to assess weather you ar eligible for IVF treatment... If you are very unhealthy but under, its fine, but 1 kg over an healthy - not! So frustrating!
That’s terrible! Did they make that policy up out of thin air or what?
IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!! SOCIALIZED MEDICINE IS PARADISE!!!!!!
What BS! Plus BMI studies were done on men only, not women 🙄
BMI is also used by some doctors as a hard cutoff for SRS (orchiectomy/vaginoplasty/vulvaplasty or hysterectomy/oophorectomy/phalloplasty). Makes you wonder why some doctors even got into the field, they way they look for any excuse to deny patients their long-needed surgeries, even over just a couple pounds and with no regard to overall recovery odds.
Yes, those sharp cutoffs for medical treatment is very common in the Nordic countries. And doctors Do Not want to listen to the stupidity of it.
Had a patient in the office I work at for his physical 6'1" and 230lbs of solid muscel. His chart lists him as obese because his weight (regardless of muscel or fat) sets him at "too high" of a BMI
Being "obese" BMI simply because of excess muscle tissue may spare some organs, but it's just as taxing on others... And unfortunately it tends to be the ones that don't heal well, like kidneys.
I'm a very lean, yet borderline obese person myself 😂
Excess mass isn't healthy... Some forms are just different kinds of unhealthy.
Our body is a system of cooperative components. Components must be sized optimally. Upsizing/Downsizing fat stores or muscles etc. will have a negative effect on the system leading to higher mortality. Upping muscle mass will put excess load on the heart.
@@michaelnewton1754 No man can ever gain an unhealthy amount of muscle naturally.
BMI...how I hated that crap when I was younger. Between 19 and 24 I would regularly hit the gym, and being a mechanic I developed alot of muscle, I was 6ft tall and weight 124kg at the heaviest. My doctor I swear was stupid, would regularly tell me I'm obese, whilst I had a 6 pack and no visible fat on me at all, now year I'm overweight, I'm now 94kg as I'm disabled and unable to do basically anything let alone exercise, my current doctor does say I could lose some weight but it's not urgent, he had some interesting names for my old doctor.
Took me ages to actually come to terms I didn't need to lose weight, of course it happened after I could no longer work or exercise.
The only time my BMI has dropped below 20, my ribs were sticking out and my waist was 23 inches. A healthy measure for a woman in my demographic is around 32- granted I have a very dramatic hourglass so my normal is 27. At the time, my liver was damaged and I couldn't absorb fat, my ketones were dangerously high even for a non-diabetic. No matter how much I ate, I could not gain weight. I was 18BMI at my absolute worst, but for most of that period I was 19. Until then, my BMI gave me some serious body dysmorphia- thanks partly to a nutrition class I took in college. Now I know for certain that it's not a number I should even give the time of day to. I was on deaths door, but I was still not technically underweight.
Thankfully all of my doctors still treated me as if I were severely underweight, because I looked like I was. I think my primary was considering hospitalizing me so I could get free food and be monitored. A major issue was not having the money for food that didn't make me worse.
I credit my recovery to the gomphrena green tea that my sister sent me for my birthday. I drink it everytime I have a flare up, and it always stops it in its tracks. Non specific diagnosis, but I do know the original cause, and what now triggers it. To sum it up if you have a negative reaction to a medication, don't push through it and assume it will stop, even if you get called uncooperative by a doctor, it's better than causing permanent damage and nearly dying. Also recognize food sensitivities and do not take chances. Just slight contamination of some very common foods will set me off.
No offense but in what demographic is a BMI of 32 considered healthy? I looked up a calculator and found that at my height (5' 9" or around 175cm if I remember right) I would need to weigh almost 220 pounds.
Just from knowing my weight and others around my height, it seems as likely that that is a healthy weight as to suggest 85 or 90 pounds is healthy
@@theodorekorehonenI think they mean waist size in inches, not bmi
Good explanation. It was still called Q index when i trained and it was just intended as a population statistic. It was never meant to be applied to individuals. We use waist to height ratio, or abdominal DEXA/MRI/CT for those who can afford it. Visceral fat is a stronger risk factor than pretty much anything else.
In my younger days, BSA (body surface area) was somehow indicative of optimal bloodflow during cardiopulmonary bypass. I don't recall the details, but there was some simple multiplication formula that dictated weight and height times [something] would yield be the optimum bloodflow during cardiopulmonary bypass. I guess it worked fairly well because I ran "The Pump" (cardiopulmonary bypass machine) successfully for several hundred patients. Yes, we had some fatalities but I think they were more a result of pre-operative systemic/cardiac damage rather than than extracorporeal blood flow.
In retrospect, "BSA" seems a bit nebulous - but it seemed to do the job at the time.
If you want to predict the future, ask an insurance actuary. It’s amazing how accurate they are.
Like with the BMI: not for individual cases, but for larger groups.
for example, an actuary can, of course, not predict if a specific 80-year-old man will die in the next year . But he can probably give a good estimate for how many persons in a group of ten thousand 80-year-old men will die in the next year.
@@tobyk.4911 yes! Exactly!
Hi, at 7:34 don't use "exponential" as an adjective, because it means something specific in mathematics.
Both the lines and the scales are linear (in the range you're talking about), not exponential.
Thank you for pointing this out.
I basically got screwed out of a career in the military because of the BMI. I naturally was heavier than what Army regs said I should be even though I could pass all physical fitness tests without a problem. The Army used BMI to measure body fat instead of an actual body fat analysis if you were over weight. With the BMI test I was over by 5 points, but an actual body fat analysis showed my percent of body fat was 10% under. It didn't matter though, because of the BMI I couldn't get awards, I couldn't get promoted, and I couldn't re-enlist.
They didn’t tape you? They taped me when the reg said that I a female who is 6” tall should be at or below 160lbs. That is not a healthy or likely possible weight for me and my level of athleticism/ muscle mass. So they had to tape me every time.
A tape test is mandatory if you failed BMI. I always had to tape and was never an issue.
During my times BMI was only the first easy check and failing that would get you taped as follow up
When I was in the army, I was friends with a black guy who was built like a brick shit house. He had to stop working out at the gym, because the data said that he was too fat. A white skinny guy also had negative 4% body fat. Wonderful system.
BMI is great for a quick, basically free, magnitude assessment of the situation. A "perfect" test would be something like a DEXA scan to determine fat content & distribution, then calculating risk based on the distribution. That would also cost ~$150 per measurement
In reality, the limitations of BMIs ability to forecast risk doesn't matter. American's have gotten so fat, the risk uncertainty in BMI is completely overshadowed by the BMI magnitude.
I’m 5’7 and 200 pounds I’m very broad shouldered and have muscle. I’m not necessarily fit but the BMI basically tells me I should be on a mobility scooter lol
I am waiting for a transplant and they say I can’t be operated on with a BMI above 35, but being 6’4 I’m around the limit when I’m not “very obese”. I think the surgeon has okayed me at the current weight, but I’m petrified of putting more on. I don’t think they should mention these limits if they don’t apply all the time.
"I come out at about 187 pounds and *69 inches* "
Everyone watching: 69 inches *nice*
hahahahah nice.
10/10 video. Thanks the quality content :)
I am a heavyweight fighter and powerlifter. I have a BMI that shows degree 3 obesity but a DEXA scan measured body composition of 22% fat. Apparently I have double bone density and myostatin deficiency according to my doctor.
That's.... Wow
I didn't know all these info Thank you so much for your hard work!
My pleasure! This was a really interesting topic to dive in to
Thanks for enlightening me abou BMI, I really needed a video like this.
Glad it was helpful! Younger me (who suffered some bad body image issues) is in the same boat
Ive always thought it was obviously stupid even without race thrown in. People have radically different skeletal mass even within the same height range and race. I have a friend two inches shorter than me but for decades at least thirty pounds heavier and hes not really overweight or muscular. If i weighed what he did id be fat as hell and if he weighed what i did youd think he was horribly diseased. Guys got a neanderthal frame, head like an oak stump and arms and legs like "No Wake" buoys. Both entirely of european descent.
What an amazing video I expected this to have millions of views
That's really kind of you to say, thank you :)
throwback to in late high school when i went to my doctor for disordered eating and being unable to gain weight, learned upon arriving that my doctor had retired so i'd have a new one that day, and after the nurse did height and weight the first thing the new doctor said when she entered the room was, "oh good, it looks like your BMI is *finally* in the normal range!" when my presenting complaint had already been taken by two separate people 🙃
this channel is going places
I appreciate that, fatherless carrot
Insurance companies: making you bet against your own survival
Volume of the body should be included in calculations since super fit people have a higher weight to height ratio in comparison to the volume their body takes up
I know I'm fat, but I also know there's tons of people way bigger and smaller with way worse health than me. I have no health problems related to my weight and yet I get fat people brochures at doctor visits
Tbh the first i realized bmi must be bullshit was in high school when my bmi said i was healthy but the red cross said they cannot take my blood bc it would be too dangerous 😭 like thats not healthy i dont think lmao
I took notes through all of that! Thank you
Informative- thank you 🙌
You a real one April, thank you :)
Bmi says I'm obese but I workout daily, bodybuild and have a waist size of 32. Hahaha makes no sense. Muscle weighs more than fat
Great video much appreciated. I’d love to see a video on Age and PREGNANCY. The common error here is that over 35+ is considered a risk factor rather than evaluating an individual women’s health!! Super frustrating
A friend had her last of 10 babies at age 49. Her insurance refused to pay for a doula because she was in the extremely high risk category due to her age. They insisted she be hospitalized and opt for induction and C-section! She was in excellent health and her pregnancy had been uneventful. (Baby #9 was born when she was 44.). Our church took up a collection and paid for the doula. She had little Stephanie at home, AMA. Stephanie is now 29, married, mother of three children, working part-time as a home CNA. My friend is 76, still in good health, just a little arthritis.
Your video made my day awesome 😀
Glad you liked it!!
Normally common sense should come into account as well you see, if you eat take away all the time and your bmi is high thats one thing, if you're always in the gmm and your bmi is high thats another thing, people know themselves which of these two categories they fit it
BMI wise I'm obese but I'm 10-11% fat at the moment.
It sounds like we need a protocol that starts at BMI but then offers more measurements a medical practitioner could take if they are concerned the patient is not falling into the appropriate weight category. It could offer observations that could be made to nudge the doctor towards a higher precision measure of adiposity, like if a person is very tall or muscular.
If you're going to use BMI but then look at body condition to decide if the BMI was right I think it'd be better to cut out the middleman and only check body condition
It's a very good measure at extremes, but like a lot of statistics, not so meaningful in "the middle of the distribution curve".
Patients make a big deal about their BMI being called "high" if they have a slightly elevated BMI of, for example, 27, but an experienced doctor will not think much about this.
And there is always the man/women who tells you "it's all muscle"-let me tell you, it's rarely true
7:28
A BMI of 20 is way worse than a BMI of 30 and in most cases the minimum point is past BMI 25
So why being between 25 and 30 is less desirable that being between 20 and 25?
It depends on a lot of factors. The biggest is gender. Females humans have to be above 18% body fat to properly synthesize hormones. Males can and usually do have lower body fat mass and are less effected by lower body fat percentage although there are still ranges that are too low.
I am 5'10'' and when I ran,I weighed a steady 168lbs. When I started running,I was around 205lbs. I always remember my family doctor telling me my BMI showed I was overweight at 168lbs! He was a bit of a joker,so he may have been pulling my leg.
So here's a weird issue I have personally run into. The data collected is meant to be the average out of that height. I am 4'8". The average person my height is a child. I am a grown woman and I am built like a grown woman so I'm not exactly skinny but I'm not really fat either. But depending on whether or not the calculations include my age, it either says I am very underweight or very over weight. Conclusion; my height is too alien for BMI calculators to figure out what I look like.
I have like a 15 bmi I’m severely underweight not on purpose but still, it’s unhealthy and worrying about eating enough is just as bad as worrying about eating too much
I remember that was an issue for me, its so. Weird. Cuz its a much rarer experience, ya know?
I had to condition myself to eat more. Was fuckin wack.
Dw tho you can do it!
After a doctor I was seeing gave me a medical and started quoting BMI numbers to me, I pointed out to him that the numbers mean nothing as it is a tool for insurance companies and is meaningless on individuals. I ended up finding a new doctor.
Fascinating! I’m in the process of trying to get a much needed hip replacement but no surgeon will do it because my BMI of 42 is too risky. So I’m in the process of getting bariatric surgery to lose the needed we& get a THR. Hard to lose weight if I’m sedentary!! So, my BMI means I have to take tons of opiates, Tylenol & ibuprofen daily & suffer the pain of a bone on bone hip joint for many more months!!! I’m outraged. I’m also 5’ 5” 242lbs. Thanks for an enlightening video!
Extra fat does increase the risks of surgery. It also means you may not respond as well to hip replacement compared to someone lower in weight, since the surgery is for a load bearing joint. Unless you're 100 extra lbs of muscle, it may be prudent to have you lose some weight first. I hope you reach your target and get approved soon! May you have a safe and smooth procedure.
Where are you at bc my mom just got a hip replacement and shes about the same weight as you, if ur near CT Orthopedic Institute, i recommend it...
Of course they won't - you're at a much higher risk of death on the operating table.
Nice video, and I’ve learned a lot, BMI should be interpreted cautiously in athletes and the elderly
I saw numerous men and women with high BMI in the military who were fit as heck. But they were in violation of some standard that does not always make sense.
Most people understand that the BMI gives just a rough estimate. If you´re not a bodybuilder, a BMI over 30 means you´re fat.
Except that they don't. A LOT of hospitals use sharply cutoff BMI requirements to allow or deny surgery/treatment - while looking at no other factors.
@@SIC647 what surgeries or treatments could that be? I guess it´s something very risky for fat people, so they won´t deny treatment to someone who is just half a kilo over the normal.They deny treatment to people who are way to fat.
@Christopher_Giustolisi I wish it was so. In my country, BMI is given way too much weight. Basically, they won't do surgery on anyone above BMI 30, unless it is a very severe or life-threatening condition.
This causes many people to suffer for longer than necessary just to lose 7 or 10 kg of weight and get below 30, which definitely doesn't make a difference for health risk.
And for any plastic surgery in the public health system, they require a max of 25. And we are not just talking cosmetic surgery, but also breast reconstruction after cancer or severely drooping eyelids which cause infections.
I think one point a lot of people miss about BMI for muscular people is that even having a ton of muscle isn’t the most health thing
It’s almost surely easier/healthier than fat for you body but if you have a ton of muscle your body still has to work to maintain it
But does that make one obese?
If you mean an unhealthy overweight person then yes it is good for a broad picture of health even if that person has a ton of non-fat mass
I don't get it. A body fat measuring scale is like 20 bucks. If I have to step on a scale, why not just use one which directly measure body fat?
You rule thank you.
I am just above the maximum healthy BMI but I fluctuate. It's pretty difficult for me to stay within healthy BMI limits.
According to Google, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is 1.96 m and weighs 118 kg. This puts him at a BMI of 30.1, just over the cutoff for "obese". Keep that in mind when you're thinking about BMI.
BTW, veterinarians use a scale basically based on judging the animal's silhouette compared to a 1-6 scale (3 is healthy weight, 1 is emaciated, 6 is morbidly obese). I've always wondered why that isn't used more for humans. Though I guess people might get upset if you show them a chunky silhouette and say "this is you".
I prefer using the smart bmi calculator.
It takes into account age and race too.
Did anyone else notice a sudden increase in volume at 2:30? It woke up my cat and I swear I didn't do anything to it
Hmm, I checked it out and it was the same volume as the previous clips. Anyone else having this issue?
The example given about thai vs italian just highlights how its likely to be not "strict" enough globally but the conclusion thats drawn in the video and in the comments is that it somehow to restrictive . The idea that non white, non affluent, non americans would be fatter, and by a lot ,in the frigging fifties is bonkers.
It doesn’t help that most people in the developed world are overweight or obese. Body fat is a far better measure than BMI. But most people who have high body fat hide behind the fact that BMI is a bad metric. Don’t use the flaws in BMI as an excuse not to make the changes you need to live a healthier life.
From the video I would be startled if this person’s body fat was in the normal range (i.e. 20% or below for a man). If it’s not, you are overweight and need to loose some body fat.
The involvement of Ansel Keys is a bit of a worry, given the quality of his work link in dietary fat to heart disease. Basically he studied 27 nations to find a link and published a seven nation study.
5:00
Also the big surge of measuring women for standardized clothing sizes was during the depression, so it's a bunch of white women who were doing it for a meal
What has cholesterol to do with it 🤔
Yes🎉I have love handles 😂hang on😮
So much incorrect information I this video, I may actually make a full on video response on all the misinformation.
For one, BMI is a SCREENING test, which are a quicker, easier, cheaper test you can give to most of the popular, to narrow down who should get the harder, costlier definitive test. And because it is the normal and abnormal bell curves overlap, if you set your cut-off to catch all positives, you will also pull in a few normals as well, but for a screening test, “casting a wider net isn’t bad” …if not, you will miss some actual cases.
For example, the definitive test for beast cancer is a needle biopsy, but you can’t do that on every woman, in every part of her breast, every year, so you need a screening test for those at risk that will catch the cancer cases as well as some women with lesions that resemble a cancer in some ways, but aren’t…..and that subset should get the definitive test. And that screening test is a mammogram. My Preventive Med Professor would say that “mammograms, as screening tests, aren’t a test for breast cancer…they are a test to see who should get the gold standard test for breast cancer, the needle biopsy.”
So a screening test like the BMI are NOT a definitive or “holy grail” test (as incorrectly said here) and are meant to be quick, painless and to see who in the entire population should get the definitive test, which for obesity can be % body fat, or fat impedance, or simply a doc knowing the categories that give a false positive (like very muscular athletes will get a false positive on the BMI.)
So this video is also criticizing a screening test for not being 100% accurate, which screening tests never are (that is the definitive test) and complaining of false positives, which unfortunately you HAVE to have in a screening test to make sure you cutoff level does not miss some actual cases.
And finally, if not the BMI….then what? Is obesity a 100% subjective concept with no criteria what-so-ever, even in medical circles where where you need SOME quantification method to discuss, stratify risks, facilitate research that saves y lives or even account for height….which the BMI does nicely?
Hey there, it sounds like we agree on the core message of the video: that BMI isn't a perfect tool, but is still useful. Just to clarify, the holy grail line is "These BMI tables are everywhere in health and medical settings here in the United States, *giving us the idea that* a low BMI is the holy grail of health. But of course, nothing is ever that simple". That idea is what made me curious about why the tool was so popular, which allowed me to dig into the history. Thanks for watching, and I appreciate you engaging with what I'm trying to communicate.
I think everyone knows it's healthier to exercise and eat healthy food in moderation, it isn't lack of knowledge that you're fat that causes deaths. What good do doctors really do by lecturing their patients about this? It makes sense for setting insurance rates, but doctors can't DO anything about weight and most people that diet regain it all or have to adopt lifelong restrictive eating habits that are themselves considered mental issues.
I'm practically my mother's clone. She was constantly trying to diet and followed all the reduced fat/sugar/salt guidelines, still was overweight until cancer started eating her alive. Cancer treatment was complicated by heart disease.
Yes, I want to eat a micronutrient rich diet and not over indulge, yes, I want to be stronger than I am, but it will do no good to beat myself up about numbers on a scale. I weigh more than mom because I don't fight it, but I also have more energy to get out of bed than she did. I enjoy my life more. That's a worthwhile trade off for a few years in my book.
It’s used very commonly here in the uk at the GP. Even they know it’s not accurate, they still use it lmao
As an intelligent person that uses his brain instead of following ignorant, unuseful and urrelevant doctrine, my doctor does not use the BMI scale. He looks at YOU and if your fat, he advises you to lose a some weight, if you're not fat, he doesn't.
This is a false indicator of health. Because just about every athlete that participates in contact sports are going to be deemed far too high on the BMI index to be considered healthy. Despite the fact they have strong cardiovascular system and a very low or moderate body fat.
Maybe I missed it, but I never heard the word “women” in this history. Still hating those charts.
BMI was always broken because it doesn't distinguish between muscle and fat.
Bfp is way better for figuring this stuff out than bmi.
I'm a heathy 5-8 male with a BMI in the 16.3 range average is what 24-18?
Its a shit system.
I just came here to say how stupid the BMI is. It is so inaccurate to compare a healthy fit person and an unhealthy non-moving person using the BMI.
Just for an idea, I work as a nurse, and often I have to weight patients. Often when I get VERY LARGE people on the scale that have massive protruding bellies etc up on the scale, their numbers are much lower than I expect because I'm use to weighing myself or similarly fit people. So like this morning, man is 3 times my width, and only 15kg heavier than me. I've been close to his weight at 90kg but the difference is, I was still a lot of muscle where as.... I have no idea what this dude's round belly was filled with. And it's crazy because our BMI would be similar, but our actual bodies drastically different and our health and abilities light years apart. It's so stupid using the BMI
Why not a database that asks height, weight, BMI, nationalities, and data compiled from natural deaths and the HWBMIN of each deceased person? Over time, as data is collected, they'd be better able to predict by comparing the patient to persons with similar HWBMIN. Just my thoughts. I'll just send this idea over to WHO and I'm sure they'll get right on it. 😂
With DNA we now know what nationalities a lot of us are.
BMI isn’t broken. The way we interpret it is broken.
I think we use it because, ‘oh, hell no!’ Is rude
I hate BMI... I'm 165cm high with the measures H108 W84 B104 but BMI doesn't count for you having an hourglass figure which is inherited and I can't exactly loose that weight which is also clear if you feel my legs because it's all muscles... I can literally do nothing and I have the legs of a female cycle racer well yeah with a little fat... I'm not saying I'm thin... I'm just saying I can NEVER get down to an average BMI because with an hourglass figure my breast and butt isn't really fat that would disappear unless I got unhealthily thin... so again I'm not saying I'm thin or average... I'm saying I'm overweight and not obese 🙄
Ancel Keys was not as smart as he thought he was.
Is obesity causationally related to disease, or is obesity simply another side effect of poor diet?
My company pays employees up to $1000 per year for achieving certain health goals, including $200 for being in the normal BMI range. That has motivated me to keep my weight down and is an example how the BMI can help to keep people healthy.
Listen! European does not mean " White", an American term. You obviously have not travelled through Europe.
As a Brit, early 19th century Europe is overwhelmingly white. Certainly enough to bias the data.
The BMI needs to be retired completely
I hate this thing of cutting pauses between sentences. Gives no time to absorb or think. Seems like a salesman trying to over-run your thinking process.
10:07 No it isn't. A Dexa scan will measure BF accurately
That’s true, and it would be cool if everyone had access to a DEXA scanner. That line in the video claims that BMI is the best we currently have for a widely accessible, convenient; and cheap tool to for predicting body fat at a population level
Your title and intro suggests that individuals can weigh more than the BMI recommends and is therefore broken. If I look at the comments, you even pinned comments voicing that opinion. The video on the other hand shows that a BMI of 25 is the upper bound for all people, and for minorities it is even lower. It also is an indicator that can predict all cause mortality. So it mostly works and maybe is too conservative.
Sorta kinda, there's some more nuance there. It sounds like we agree that BMI can predict mortality at each extreme end of the U-curve (extreme underweight and extreme overweight).
My main argument is that BMI is broken because it originated as an average value for an anthropometric measurement, not a health metric, and it failed at the former since its sample was so biased. From there, the application of BMI hasn't been appropriate either since the different categories don't predict disease or death risk equally.