Is BMI Good for Anything These Days?
Many experts, over many years, have questioned the value of using body mass index (BMI) to determine a patient’s health status. “A person’s health is influenced by a complex mix of health behaviors, genetic factors, lean mass, fitness, and environmental risks,” Holly Ann Russell, MD, author of a recent commentary titled “Is It Time to Say Goodbye to BMI?” said in a statement.
“No simple math formula or number on the scale can measure a person’s health. And using one for that purpose may actually cause harm,” added Russell, a family medicine physician at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, New York.
Along the same lines, in 2023, the American Medical Association (AMA) summarized the drawbacks of using BMI in a policy statement based on a report stating that ”[n]umerous comorbidities, lifestyle issues, gender, ethnicities, medically significant familial-determined mortality effectors, duration of time one spends in certain BMI categories and the expected accumulation of fat with aging are likely to significantly affect interpretation of BMI data, particularly in regard to morbidity and mortality rates.”
Excerpted from Medscape
