The News For Obesity Gets Even Worse
The gold standard for classifying people as obese was using their BMIs or Body Mass Index. Unfortunately, it seems that BMIs severely underestimate how fat we really are. That’s bad. When women in a recent study had a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan, which measures body fat, muscle mass and bone density, almost half of women (48 percent) were misclassified as not obese by BMI, but were found to be obese by percent body fat on DEXA. Amazingly enough, 25 percent of men were misclassified as being obese by BMI, but were in fact not obese by percent body fat. This study ,and article which talks about it, really point out how things are changing. It even looks like Leptin levels will be a new marker of health. All this shows that as we continually learn more, through better testing and technology, that we have to be able to open our minds to new paradigm shifts. We also should NEVER use these numbers (BMIs, cholesterol, Leptin, body weight, etc.) as quality indicators because they do, in fact, change. Makes sense?
A few years ago I hosted State Department visitors from Chad and Burkina Faso (don’t look it up they are both sub sahara Africa) they took their anti malarial meds everyday in my Rural Illinois home (zip 61081 if you doubt rural). They envied Americans who look so prosperous and healthy admiring my BMI of 25 and my wife of BMI 22. They were both @ 18 and they were the aristocracy of their country.
NBC news last night showed a NORMAL woman with 1 chin and no evidence of obesity who had been classified obese by the DEXA scan.
Let no insurance company pay for this idiotic test.
Look at the patient. If they smoke tell them to QUIT. IF THEY WEIGH more than they should tell them so.
If they weigh enough to only be able to shop at WAL MART tell them they will die in 5 years if they don’t lose weight.
Hard Data shows that a Diabetic Foot Ulcer has a <50% five year survival.
Breast cancer and prostate cancer have "walks" and lobbies in congress and pink and blue ribbons.
Myocardial Infarction, Pancreatic Cancer and Lung cancer are the only common diseases with a worse long term survival than an ulcer on you bunion in a diabetic.
Maybe it is just culling of the herd. But if that is the case, quit wasting money from the federal coffers on the non compliant.
Do we really need another costly “test” to tell us what our eyes can see?