(Amanda MacMillan/ Health.com) — When it comes to determining whether a person is overweight, body mass index (BMI) is the most widely used measure out there. But doctors admit that BMI—a ratio of weight to height—is far from perfect. Now, a new study suggests there may be a better way to estimate the risks of health problems associated with excess weight.
The new research, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that waist-to-hip ratio was a better predictor of whether people would die over the course of the study, compared to BMI. This isn’t the first study to reach this conclusion, but it’s one of the largest to-date.
Researchers from Loughborough University in the U.K. and the University of Sydney in Australia looked at data from 42,702 men and women living in England and Scotland over a 10-year period. Specifically, they wanted to know if people who carried extra weight around their middles were at increased risks of health problems, compared to those who were technically overweight but carried their extra pounds elsewhere.
Over the course of the study, 5,355 of the participants died. After controlling for factors such as age, gender, smoking status, and physical activity, the researchers found that people who had normal BMIs but who also had “central obesity”—defined as a high waist-to-hip ratio—had a 22% increased risk of death from all causes, compared to people with normal BMIs and healthier waist-to-hip ratios. (…)