This article will appear in Iorì:wase September 6, 2018
By Richard Tardif
My last visit to A Doctor’s office was more of a get-to-know you visit, given our family Doctor, who we faithfully pledge our allegiance to for 25-years, retired. The younger, 40ish Doctor, who greeted me wearing jeans and a Harley Davidson Tee, was definitely different from what I was accustom to seeing. I was also accustomed to the usual opening remarks. “Your weight is too high, and your BMI is close to 30. Eat less, move more.”
These comments never came. In fact, he never mentioned my weight, my BMI, or even what foods I was eating. To my surprise, we spoke about CrossFit, which is one of his passions, and we spoke of High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT, which is my passion. Welcome to the new world of medicine, a world that challenges conventional wisdom and embraces fitness. One of the challenge is to question the use of the BMI as an indicator of health. I’m going to enjoy my new Docto
Body Mass Index (BMI) is calculated using a person’s height and weight measures and then plugged into a mathematical equation. Over the last 50-years, BMI values have remained consistent that someone with a BMI above 25 is considered overweight and therefore unhealthy. Over 30, one is considered obese, at risk for cardiovascular problems ranging from heart disease to stroke. A BMI above 40 triggers all the health alarms.
For decades, these values have been proven suspect.
Doctor William Zinsser at the Clarke Center for Health in Fitness in New York City, decades ago refuted the use of BMI as health indicator. “Much of the information on BMI is usually gathered form clinical observations and experiments on animals and cells cultured in laboratories,” Zinsser wrote in 2001.”Nobody has actually subjected humans to rigorous experimentation directly showing the BMI values lead to a problem. It may aggravate a pre-existing condition, but there is no evidence that BMI causes a pathological condition,” he said.
The BMI is also used, without intention, to fuel our obsession that healthy people are athletic and live longer than non-athletic people, but we find that recent studies are showing that athletic people do not necessarily outlive couch potatoes, unless, the activity is linked to other conditions or behaviours.
The extraneous variables show up in the BMI calculation as well. People with a high proportion of muscle come out with a high BMI even though they have a very low body fat composition. Other measurements can be used to qualify BMI such as having a high BMI and a large waist, bulky hips, or a top-heavy torso. Research demonstrates the limitations of using BMI and girth as sole indicator of health. Doctors, like my CrossFit Doctor, are more focused on measuring athletic performance at a variety of aerobic, endurance and strength activities, as well as the quality of foods.
His advice? “If your pants and shirts are becoming tight, you might want to consider some long-term change in eating behaviour.”
I like him!
Richard Tardif is a personal fitness trainer, author, and an award-winning journalist writing teaching about health and wellness. Richard’s first book Stop the Denial: A Case for Embracing the Truth about Fitness, challenges, surprises, and inspires you to embrace a fitness lifestyle that will work in achieving your individual goals.
