Waist to hip ratio beats BMI

For many years, the medical establishment has considered Body Mass Index (BMI) to be a key indicator of heart disease. Physical checkups often result in a doctor providing the patient with a BMI percentile and based on that figure, assessed whether the patient was in the at-risk category. But a recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet, suggests that there is another, more effective method for detecting heart disease risk. And all it involves is a tape measure and a calculator.

BMI is considered the standard measure of obesity. It takes into account a person's weight and height and comes up with a percentage that indicates whether the individual is overweight or not. A percentile over 25 suggests that a patient cannot afford any further weight gain. But BMI has long been criticized for its central fallibility -- it does not factor in where on the body the patient's fat lies, or whether the body mass constitutes fat or muscle. With BMI, a lean, muscled athlete could have the same percentile as an out of shape couch potato. This is why researchers have been searching for a more effective, but just as simple, measurement for obesity.

It appears that the waist/hip ratio may be exactly that. A Canadian led study, crunching data from 27,098 patients in 52 countries, concluded that BMI is three times less likely to indicate heart attack risk than waist/hip ratio. Because there are such established links between obesity, abdominal fat and the increased risk of heart disease, it made sense to look at whether waist size could be an appropriate indicator of health issues. It became clear from the study that BMI in heart attack patients was only slightly higher than in control groups, while those same patients' waist/hip ratios were significantly higher than those of their counterparts.