Okay Bickerfest folks: My son is due to be born in March, and one of the things we have a fair bit to worry about is finding a good pediatrician. One of my relatives has children who are quite active and they have good diets; there is no shortage of healthy food and exercise in their home. Be that as it may, their pediatrician is quite emphatic that they are all risking obesity. This is because their respective Body Mass Indexes (BMIs) is quite high. Now the BMI is a ratio of a persons weight versus their height. It makes no exception for body fat percentage, resting heart rate, basal metabolic rate, overall heart health, or even LDL (bad cholesterol) count. Obviously I do not want my children to be obese; however, I also do not want them to be otherwise healthy and well-built yet their pediatrician insists that they are in poor health simply because the BMI says so. My questions (strictly for conversation fodder) are these: 1. Should people be worried about their BMI? 2. Is the BMI merely one of many diagnostic tools that can be used to construct a profile of a persons health? 4. Or is the BMI outdated hogwash that doesnt yield any useful data, but its an easy way to get more patients into expensive treatments? 5. Furthermore if you believe the BMI to be unreliable, then why do you think insurance companies use it in calculations of a persons life expectancy?
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 03:25:35 +0000
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