1. Introductory remarks
Both obesity and underweight are considered to be unhealthy and BMI is used to determine if your weight is healthy corresponding to your height. In many of the cases, obesity is considered to be more harmful than the other one for it is found to be responsible for a variety of ailments as malfunctioning of the heart, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, etc.
2. Method of determining BMI
You can determine your BMI by following these three steps, viz, multiplying the weight in pounds by 703, and then dividing the answer obtained by your height in inches and finally dividing that answer by your height in inches again. An index below 18.5 is classified in the category of underweight; 18.5-24.9 falls into the health ycategory; 25-29.9 gets you into an overweight category. You start falling into the concern zone when the BMI ranges between 30 and 39.9 and above and beyond this the alarm bell is triggered as those falling into this trajectory are considered to be morbidly obese.
3. Limitations of BMI
It needs to be noted that BMI is not considered to be a precise method in the determination of health of an individual. In other words, by looking at the index per se doctors do not pronounce judgments. BMI readings are not uniform across all the individuals and have a tendency to vary according to ages. For example, those who are above 65 the BMI tend to be slightly higher than the normal which is due to a natural protection system provided by the body to mitigate the effects of osteoporosis. Doctors also use other methods as waist-top hip ratio to determine the incidence of underweight or obesity. While BMI could be a pointer towards the determination of one’s health in terms of weight, yet, physicians also look at the type of profession in which you are and also conduct other tests as cholesterol levels to decide the status of your health. In the same way, those who are accustomed to heavy exercising or body builders may have a higher BMI than what is considered to be normal due to the fact that muscles weigh more than the fat.
4. Concluding remarks
Despite the limitations pointed out above, medical scientists and fitness experts believe in the use of BMI as an indicator to determine one’s health based on weight conditions. This could be a starting point which would help them in chalking out a course of mainly lifestyle changes that could help you in tackling this condition and preventing future complications.