Being overweight as defined by the body mass index rating scale is not linked to an increase in death when considered separately from other health issues, a new study found.
Also known as BMI, the calculation measures a person’s body fat based on height and weight. As currently used, the BMI scale divides adult populations into various degrees of body fat.
“The use of the word ‘overweight’ is misleading here, as it excludes anyone with a BMI above 30. In lay language ‘overweight’ would usually be interpreted as anyone with a weight above ‘normal’ and would include obese patients,” said Dr. Baptiste Leurent, a lecturer in medical statistics at University College London, in a statement.
Death vs. diseaseIn the new study, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers analyzed data gathered on over 554,000 non-pregnant Americans older than age 20 from the 1999-2018 National Health Interview Survey and the 2019 US National Death Index. “This paper does not add anything new,” said Naveed Sattar, a professor of cardiovascular and metabolic health at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, who was not involved in the study.
However, the risk of future disease is “probably a more important measure of health than all cause mortality,” said Tom Sanders, professor emeritus of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, who was not involved in the study. “In addition, if you look at the big picture findings, they did find an increase of mortality with obesity — so it’s not as if they’ve refuted the usefulness of BMI for all purposes,” he said.
“People with elevated waist circumference had higher risk of mortality compared to normal waist circumference within the same BMI groups,” Visaria said in an email. “In the overweight BMI range , the risk of mortality was 17-27% higher among people with elevated waist circumference compared to lower waist circumference.”
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