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Topic: Can Numbers Dictate Our Health?
Topic Statement: BMI is quite outdated, especially for skinny fat Indians. Focusing only on height and weight cannot tell if a person is healthy or not.
Raghavi found herself in a state of confusion after checking her Body Mass Index (BMI). The reading showed a healthy value of 20, which falls within the normal range. However, her body told a different story. She struggled to jog without quickly feeling breathless and was starting to accumulate fat in certain areas of her body as well, despite not being overweight. She couldn't shake off the dissonance between what the numbers said and what her body told her. This situation could only suggest that the BMI and the weight scale are only numbers, misleading us to believe in the illusion based on weight and height.
We are often told to get our weight and height checked to assess where we stand in the BMI range. We are categorized as underweight or overweight if we fall outside the 18.5-25 range. BMI often gauges individuals based on weight and height but doesn’t provide a complete picture. Going back in time, BMI is known to be based on the efforts of Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet around 200 years ago to describe a normal human body. He believed that weight increases as the square of height. Imagine someone saying that when you get taller, you also tend to gain weight much faster, kind of like how squares grow quickly compared to regular numbers. In 1972, physiologist Dr. Ancel Keys suggested that this observation could be used to assess body fat. Since then, we’ve been uncovering layers of understanding about body fat, only to find that it can’t be used quite literally.
For instance, let's compare two individuals - Harshith & Suchitra. Harshith has an active lifestyle while Suchitra leads a sedentary lifestyle. After checking their BMI, Harshith falls into the obese category, and Suchitra falls into the healthy category which should have been the other way around. To understand why this happened, consider that Harshith has a higher percentage of muscle mass and a low percentage of body fat. Because of this, he tends to weigh more but remains healthy with no risk of health issues. On the other hand, Suchitra has a higher percentage of body fat and is also experiencing a skinny-fat condition where the fat is surrounded in the abdominal area. She is at risk of various health issues like high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes. Those numbers you see there are not your health report. Your weight cannot tell much about your health and it is not the only factor to determine it unless you face diagnosed health conditions like obesity that make your daily activities difficult.
You might wonder if there are better alternatives to BMI. Well, there are. One of the alternatives is Body Composition Analysis (BCA) which is often found in medical facilities and gyms. Let’s understand what body composition is. It is the percentage of fat, muscle mass, bone, and water in the body. You've got it right. Body Composition Analysis (BCA) can provide all that information within minutes, accurately using a low-dose X-ray procedure called a DEXA scan. This scan creates detailed images of the body to find the distribution and quantity of body fat, along with water, muscle, and bone proportions. Also, BCA can potentially identify health hazards and help people to make informed health choices.
Dr. Shilpa Davé, director of Shilpa Dave Health, says, 'The measurement and interpretation of BMI as a tool to monitor health has many limitations.' Considering the limitations and alternatives to BMI that we have explored, keeping ourselves aware and making conscious decisions is the most responsible action one can take.