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loss of trust, delayed care) while providing minimal to no benefit. Thus, BMI assessment may be causing risk (e.g. Further, doctors may miss diagnoses because they wrongly assume someone’s complaints or symptoms are due to weight.Īustin and co-author Tracy Richmond of Harvard Medical School noted that, “in many of the instances in which BMI is assessed in medical settings, the information is not pertinent to medical decision making and often not even used.
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If clinicians focus too much on BMI, it can introduce mistrust into the doctor-patient relationship and lead patients to opt not to follow their doctor’s advice. For example, weight-based shame may lead some patients to delay or avoid medical care. A BMI of less than 18.5 kg/m² is considered underweight. A BMI between 18.5 and 25 kg/m² indicates a normal weight. BMI is a numerical value of your weight in relation to your height. It is used as a screening tool to identify whether an adult is at a healthy weight. The article cited an October 19 MedPage Today piece she co-authored urging that BMI be dropped as a clinical metric and citing a growing body of research showing the negative consequences of its use. BMI is an indicator of the amount of body fat for most people. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED).
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Experts have also pointed out that BMI fails to take into account factors such as how much fat versus muscle a patient has, the distribution of fat in their body (typically, fat around the waist increases disease risk more than fat in other places), and their metabolic health.Īmong those quoted in the article was Bryn Austin, professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Octo– Clinicians should pull back on the widespread use of body mass index (BMI) as a metric for assessing people’s health because it can lead to patient distrust and delayed care, say some health experts.Īccording to an October 24 article in the Montreal Gazette, criticism is growing that BMI-a formula that uses height and weight to measure body fat-is a “flawed, crude, archaic and overrated proxy for health.” Those opposed to its continued use argue that it was developed based on white males and has little validity for other racial and ethnic groups, and that it is sometimes used to deny certain people joint replacements and other surgeries.