How Useful Is The Body Mass Index (BMI)?
Body Mass Index (BMI)
We all know that our body stores energy in fats, but too much or too little body fat leads to the risks of illness & disease. But it all depends on where the fat is stored in your body. The amount of fat that the dual-energy absorptiometry machine can precisely measure your body stores.
The machine is also known as a DXA scan. It is known to be a very cheap alternative to determine the total amount of fat of your body by measuring your BMI (body mass index). Another option for its calculation is using a body mass index calculator.
This free online BMI calculator by calculator-online.net displays your BMI depending on height, and weight.
What Your BMI Means?
It is beneficial to go a step back & understand what it is measuring and why it is calculated to understand “what your BMI means”. Body mass index is basically your size, which is calculated depending on your current body weight and height. BMI is useful because it uses your weight & height to figure out if your current body weight is healthy or not.
Sometimes it becomes time-consuming to work out your BMI. But with the free assistance of an online BMI calculator, you can easily calculate your BMI for both men & women.
Read here: Does Height Increase After 18?
What’s a Normal BMI?
Usually, the average BMI is considered between 18.5 to 25. A person that has a BMI of between 25 to 30 is considered to be overweight. While a person that has BMI over 30 is considered obese. Also, a person with less than 18.5 BMI is known to be underweight.
According to the experts, with most of the health measures, the body mass index is considered not a perfect test. For instance, the result can’t be considered appropriate when it comes to pregnancy, high muscles, etc. It is also not a good measure of health for the children.
So, the question that will bother us is, why does BMI matter? In general, if the BMI is higher than required, the risks of developing a range of illnesses are linked to being overweight.
It includes the risks of arthritis, liver disease, diabetes, blood pressure issues, cholesterol, etc. It would be better for you to take care of your BMI. All you need is to calculate regularly.
Want to know how to calculate my BMI, don’t worry about it. Simple, make use of an online BMI calculator female to understand how to calculate BMI.
Is It A Good Indicator Of Health?
Despite various converse, BMI does not identify if a person is healthy or not. There are many studies regarding this, which show risks of a person of chronic disease & premature death does not increase with the basal metabolic rate. A retrospective study of 2017 found 103,218 deaths and the BMI of those people was 30.0 or greater.
They have about 1.5 to 2.7 times greater risk of death after a 30-year follow-up. Another study on 16,868 people that fall in the obese basal metabolic index category has a risk of death of about 20 percent increased risk as compared to the normal BMI category.
These studies also observed that the people who were underweighted and belongs to the obese category died at the age of 6.7 & 3.7 years earlier, compared to those who fall in the normal BMI category. Many professionals use it as a general snapshot of the person’s health risks. But still, this metric is not only the one that helps to diagnose the health problems of a person.
Because of BMI criticization for its oversimplification for health, many of the analysts support its abilities that help to figure out the risks of a person having a chronic disease, particularly for the risk of early death and metabolic syndrome.
Final Words
Body mass index is not considered a perfect measure of health as a single measure. But it is still very important for many conditions when a person is an overweight or low weight. BMI is not a perfect measure, and the reason for it is that it doesn’t directly determine body fat.
Finding BMI is a complex task when it comes to its manual calculation. Don’t worry; utilize the BMI calculator that tells a person’s BMI according to the measurements of current body weight, height, and gender.