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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian) with the original title: "body mass index is easy to cause body anxiety?" Author: vodka

Body mass index (BMI) is currently the most widely used and the easiest indicator of health. However, some scientists believe that the body mass index does not reflect the real state of health and should be stopped. So what's wrong with body mass index?

BMI doesn't reflect fat.

Unsplash.com with the increase in the number of overweight people around the world, television and new media report it almost every day, which often makes people feel anxious.

In the UK and the US, for example, nearly 60 per cent of people are overweight or obese. But where does the number "60%" come from? This is the result of counting people's body mass index.

Body mass index, or BMI (acronym for Body Mass Index), is a measure of how fat a person is and whether he is healthy. The algorithm is weight divided by height squared (weight in kilograms and height in meters).

When the BMI value is 20-25, the weight is normal, if the value is below 18, it is underweight; if the value is between 25-30, it is overweight; and if the BMI is more than 30, it can be considered obese.

However, in recent years, there has been more and more controversy about BMI. Scientists believe that BMI does not reflect the body's fat content and real health status, and is prone to body anxiety.

For example, two people of exactly the same height and weight, one of whom is a football player and the other is an ordinary person. The BMI of the two is equal, but in fact, rugby players have more muscle mass and less fat, and it is clear that BMI does not reflect this difference.

Pixabay.com for these reasons, a British agency recently recommended that it stop using BMI to measure people's fat, thin and health. But if you don't use BMI, can you directly measure the amount of fat in the body?

BMI is relatively reasonable.

The most accurate method for measuring fat weight by wikipedia.com is dual energy X-ray absorption (DEXA).

This method uses X-rays of two different energies to scan the body. X-rays are absorbed when they pass through different parts of the body. the denser the parts, the more X-rays are absorbed, and eventually the X-rays that are not absorbed will be irradiated on the film.

By analyzing the negatives, the exact amount of fat can be obtained. Another way is to use a body fat scale. The body fat scale uses the "bioelectrical impedance method" (bioelectric impedance analysis), which detects changes in resistance by inputting a weak current into the human body to obtain body information.

Although pexels.com dual-energy X-ray absorption method is the most accurate, this method requires special equipment and professional technical personnel, so it is not suitable for large-scale promotion and use.

Although the body fat scale has a wide range of applications, it also has a well-known disadvantage: it is not accurate enough.

In contrast, the cost of BMI is low and the algorithm is simple, so it is suitable for wide application. Although there are some problems in measuring large muscle groups such as athletes, after all, most people do not belong to this group. Therefore, for most people, a higher BMI means a higher amount of fat.

Pexels.com generally speaking, if you want to estimate the fat and health status of the general public, calculating and counting BMI is a relatively reasonable method.

Of course, BMI cannot be used as a diagnosis or treatment alone, especially in clinical medicine, BMI must be used in combination with other data, such as blood pressure, fasting insulin levels, blood glucose levels and family history of metabolic diseases.

How much fat can the body store?

Then again, what harm does a large amount of fat do to the body? In the process of weight gain or loss, people often have a lot of misconceptions.

For example, many people think that fat cells increase with weight, but in fact, the number of fat cells does not change much. They are like balloons, expanding as they gain weight and shrinking when they lose weight.

Moreover, it is safest to store fat in fat cells. If there is too much fat in the body, fat cells store a lot of fat and "swell" to the limit, unable to store any more fat.

The extra fat accumulates in muscle or liver cells, which cannot store too much fat, or it can lead to serious diseases such as type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases.

So how do we know how much fat the body can store on the premise of health? Unfortunately, no suitable method has been found to evaluate this, and scientists are still working on it.

Once we find the right way, we will enter a new era-our health is under control, and our fat and weight can be accurately measured and controlled.

Until then, for most people, BMI may still be needed to make a preliminary assessment of their health.

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