Is Your BMI Really a Good Measure Of Your Health?
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The first thing we check to get an idea about our fitness is our BMI. But, is it a good measure to know about our fitness? It is standard to determine whether you are normal, overweight, or obese. It is calculated with your height and your weight. So, it defines a relationship between your height and your weight. The first step of any physical test is the BMI. But from the method, it is clear that it only considers weight and height as indicators of good health.
Health issues can be infinite, and it does not have any say in that. Obesity, no doubt, can be immensely dangerous and is undoubtedly a big issue as it can give rise to many diseases. But obesity isn’t the only health issue humanity is facing. There are so many diseases that are not in any way attached to weight. Take cancer as an example. A person can be perfectly healthy on the outside but has a really big tumor inside. Who knows what is happening inside the body unless you get it checked?
Plus, BMI only shows that, is really in shape or not? But, according to many scientists, the amount of mass in the body doesn’t matter; where it’s lying matters. So, BMI only shows us the results and not the reason. The reason can be anything, good cholesterol or bad cholesterol.
Why is BMI Important?
It doesn’t give us a proper lookout for our health. But it can surely be a good starting point. Once you know if your BMI is normal or not, you can go on and perform some other tests too. Just like if you are overweight according to your BMI, it indicates many health issues that you can face or already have. So once you find your BMI, you can be sure that you have completed the first fitness level.
However, It is not valid for pregnant women, children, and the elderly. So you would have to double sure for them.
Obesity indicates many underlying diseases such as diabetes, hyper blood pressure, heart diseases, and high cholesterol. So if you found obese in your BMI, you better start improving on your diet and have a healthy lifestyle.
Plus, if you’re found overweight, you can relax a bit, but you need to change your lifestyle.
Therefore, It gives you a good start in analyzing your health and chronic diseases related to it.
A Good BMI?
BMI calculated by dividing your weight or body mass by the square of your height, taking weight in kilograms and height in meters. A good and normal BMI is between 18.5 – 25, while you considered overweight if your BMI is between 25-30 and Obese if above 30.
So you would need to worry if your BMI is over 30 or below 18.5 as these are the extreme conditions. However, if your BMI is anywhere between 18.5 – 30, then there’s nothing you need to worry about.
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Should BMI Be The Only Criteria?
It undoubtedly gives us a good start, but depending solely on the BMI should not done. As BMI can tell you that you are obese and can have many health issues, but it doesn’t tell you about those health problems? Such as obesity puts you at high risk of diabetes and blood pressure, but it doesn’t confirm that you already have them. Plus, it’s impossible to get an accurate idea of your body weight since it depends upon gravity. So you can have different body weights in different parts of the world.
Since BMI only represents the relationship between your height and weight, it doesn’t give you any information about diseases that are not related to your weight, just like cancer and liver diseases. Plus, they only show you there is a problem in the body but don’t clearly indicate the problem in specific. It just gives you a vague idea about your health; you can’t judge your health solely on it.
Plus, there can be thousands of problems in the body as our body has a very massive and complex system, so a mere BMI test cannot list all of them.
Conclusion
It surely gives us a good start, but we cannot conclude based upon it. BMI is an indicator, not the sole criteria. It tells us that something is wrong with the body, but it doesn’t tell you what is wrong with the body? For that, you would need some elaborate tests to get a clear idea about your health with coupons for healthcare. To conclude, It is a good start and is surely the best indicator to check on your health, but it is not the whole criteria as it just gives you a starting point or a vague idea about your health.