Waist to Hip Ratio Good Measure of Obesity in Seniors
BMI gets a lot of flack. The gripe you hear most is it doesn't consider muscle mass.
Let's say you're short and have big muscles, your BMI will call you obese. It's happened to me for years.
Experts say a similar glitch occurs in old folks. Body composition changes as you age, meaning BMI becomes less accurate over time.
Reporting in the Annals of Epidemiology, researchers discovered among 1,200 individuals in their 70s, there was no link between death risk and body mass index after 12 years, but there was a connection with waist to hip ratio.
Waist to hip ratio measures the circumference of waist and hips. For the study, if waist to hip ratio grew closer to one, or went above one, death risk got higher.
At this point, body mass index doesn't faze me. I gauge my bodyweight like this--if my thighs start rubbing together, its time to stop eating!
Via Reuters.
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Makes sense to me...my grandma was a CNA at a nursing home for years and all the residents were usually an OK weight, but most of them were pretty overfat with big bellies. That is not happening to me because I plan on being very active long into my ripe old age.
ReplyI love that the photo accompanying this story is Grandpa Simpson. :D
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