I wonder what the psychology behind believing heart disease is preventable vs cancer being unpreventable.
I think it's a much simpler disease to understand.
Many forms of heart disease are easy to understand. My heart is blocked up with a fatty deposit because I ate too much junk food? Makes sense, I could stop doing that.
Some of my skin cells are dividing uncontrollably because I sat in the sun too long 20 years ago? And somehow it's spreading to totally unrelated organs? I don't get it.
Interesting article. I don't know that I'd take too much to heart given some of the obvious caveats the author has been nice enough to make explicit, but it sounds like I'd be hard pressed to argue the suggestions contained within. For the tl;dr crowd: - written by a physician - people often think that heart disease is controllable by our actions whereas they feel that cancer is not - > people can’t change many risk…
BMI is a surprisingly relevant metric for many things as it's a comparison between volume (weight) and surface area (height ^2). And yes, short people do have an inherent advantage there which for example possibly relates to how small dogs tend to live longer.
BMI is a horrible metric because it doesn't take body composition into account. I can't believe I was once almost considered obese with a body fat of less than 5%. 5'10" at 200-210.
Interesting article. I don't know that I'd take too much to heart given some of the obvious caveats the author has been nice enough to make explicit, but it sounds like I'd be hard pressed to argue the suggestions contained within. For the tl;dr crowd: - written by a physician - people often think that heart disease is controllable by our actions whereas they feel that cancer is not - > people can’t change many risk…
What's wrong with BMI for something like this? It's such a simple measure and it seems to be useful for predicting health issues. From what I've read body fat percentage is what really matters, but accurately calculating that takes expensive equipment. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/summer-of-sci... seems to indicate that BMI does a pretty good job, although it may be too generous on the high end.
The link you provided indicates that BMI is incorrect (when compared to body fat %) roughly 1 in 5 times. That's pretty high, IMHO and that is why many people have a problem with it.
Interesting article. I don't know that I'd take too much to heart given some of the obvious caveats the author has been nice enough to make explicit, but it sounds like I'd be hard pressed to argue the suggestions contained within. For the tl;dr crowd: - written by a physician - people often think that heart disease is controllable by our actions whereas they feel that cancer is not - > people can’t change many risk…
What's wrong with BMI for something like this? It's such a simple measure and it seems to be useful for predicting health issues. From what I've read body fat percentage is what really matters, but accurately calculating that takes expensive equipment. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/summer-of-sci... seems to indicate that BMI does a pretty good job, although it may be too generous on the high end.
> It's such a simple measure and it seems to be useful for predicting health issues.
It is good for predicting in general populations, but can easily fall apart with individuals. It doesn't take into account what the makeup of your mass is. Muscle is denser than fat, so a muscular man and a fat man of the same height and weight would have the same BMI, but vastly different health profiles.
Interesting article. I don't know that I'd take too much to heart given some of the obvious caveats the author has been nice enough to make explicit, but it sounds like I'd be hard pressed to argue the suggestions contained within. For the tl;dr crowd: - written by a physician - people often think that heart disease is controllable by our actions whereas they feel that cancer is not - > people can’t change many risk…
BMI is a tool for doctors to use, along with clinical judgement. No doctor is going to look at a lean, well muscled individual and tell them they're at risk for heart disease because their BMI is high.
BMI is something that fails in theory and works in practice.
Interesting article. I don't know that I'd take too much to heart given some of the obvious caveats the author has been nice enough to make explicit, but it sounds like I'd be hard pressed to argue the suggestions contained within. For the tl;dr crowd: - written by a physician - people often think that heart disease is controllable by our actions whereas they feel that cancer is not - > people can’t change many risk…
Regarding BMI:
>In fact, for most people BMI correlates quite well with adiposity. In one study researchers compared BMI to a more direct measure of body fat percentage using skin-fold thickness. They found that when subjects met the criterion for obesity based upon BMI, they were truly obese by skin-fold thickness 50-80% of the time (depending on gender and ethnicity). When they were not obese by BMI they were not obese by skin-fold 85-99% of the time. So BMI is a rough but useful estimate, good for large epidemiological studies where more elaborate fat percentage measurements are not practical.”
Interesting article. I don't know that I'd take too much to heart given some of the obvious caveats the author has been nice enough to make explicit, but it sounds like I'd be hard pressed to argue the suggestions contained within. For the tl;dr crowd: - written by a physician - people often think that heart disease is controllable by our actions whereas they feel that cancer is not - > people can’t change many risk…
BMI is a tool for doctors to use, along with clinical judgement. No doctor is going to look at a lean, well muscled individual and tell them they're at risk for heart disease because their BMI is high. BMI is something that fails in theory and works in practice.
when you record someone's BMI and it gets thrown in a spreadsheet as patient 123456 has BMI 23.5 the doctor is no longer looking at the patient. perhaps it's good enough, i don't claim to be able to evaluate the methodology of the study (and perhaps using BMI simply results in more skeptical results, by leaving healthy people out of the low risk group, which I'm fine with - not sure this is true though). it really was an incidental note on my part, but i stand by it. i am a little surprised at how much we're talking about it, i guess it is bikeshedding, which is understandable, im not qualified to comment with authority on much of the material myself :)
Interesting article. I don't know that I'd take too much to heart given some of the obvious caveats the author has been nice enough to make explicit, but it sounds like I'd be hard pressed to argue the suggestions contained within. For the tl;dr crowd: - written by a physician - people often think that heart disease is controllable by our actions whereas they feel that cancer is not - > people can’t change many risk…
BMI is a surprisingly relevant metric for many things as it's a comparison between volume (weight) and surface area (height ^2). And yes, short people do have an inherent advantage there which for example possibly relates to how small dogs tend to live longer.
Because muscle and bone are denser than fat, and exist in higher proportion in fitter people, two people could easily have identical BMIs even though one is a powerlifter with 5% body fat and the other is mostly made of Cheetos.
What's wrong with BMI for something like this? It's such a simple measure and it seems to be useful for predicting health issues. From what I've read body fat percentage is what really matters, but accurately calculating that takes expensive equipment. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/summer-of-sci... seems to indicate that BMI does a pretty good job, although it may be too generous on the high end.
> It's such a simple measure and it seems to be useful for predicting health issues. It is good for predicting in general populations, but can easily fall apart with individuals. It doesn't take into account what the makeup of your mass is. Muscle is denser than fat, so a muscular man and a fat man of the same height and weight would have the same BMI, but vastly different health profiles.
>It is good for predicting in general populations, but can easily fall apart with individuals.
While it can "easily fall apart with individuals", the difficulty lies in finding an individual to measure that will make BMI fall apart.
And that's because the huge majority of us is of the kind of complexion and body type where BMI works well.
So, sure it can give false positives, but for a quite small fraction -- besides any other rough medical heuristic does the same (e.g. signs of having the flu can also be caused by 200 other reasons).
BMI is a surprisingly relevant metric for many things as it's a comparison between volume (weight) and surface area (height ^2). And yes, short people do have an inherent advantage there which for example possibly relates to how small dogs tend to live longer.
Because muscle and bone are denser than fat, and exist in higher proportion in fitter people, two people could easily have identical BMIs even though one is a powerlifter with 5% body fat and the other is mostly made of Cheetos.
Yes, but powerlifters with 5% body fat are far more rarer than Cheetos-munging fat people.
So the possibility of such false positives is not that high, making still a good heuristic. Not to mention: if one is a thin, mostly-muscle powerlifter type, they already know they are not obese...