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jcmarchi · 1 month

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Waist-to-height ratio detects fat obesity in children and adolescents significantly better than BMI, study finds - Technology Org

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Waist-to-height ratio detects fat obesity in children and adolescents significantly better than BMI, study finds - Technology Org

An inexpensive measure of obesity in children and adolescents that could replace body mass index (BMI) has been identified in a new study as waist circumference-to-height ratio. This measure detected excess fat mass and distinguished fat mass from muscle mass in children and adolescents more accurately than BMI. The study, published in Pediatric Research, was conducted in collaboration between the universities of Bristol, Exeter and Eastern Finland.

Waist circumference-to-height ratio may be universally adopted, as non-invasive and inexpensive fat mass overweight and obesity surveillance, monitoring, and prevention initiatives in routine paediatric healthcare practice, also in low-resource settings. Image credit: Andrew Agbaje

The study is the largest and longest follow-up dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA)- measured fat mass and muscle mass study in the world using Bristol’s Children of the 90s data (also known as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children).

The prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity has reached an epidemic proportion and is affecting nearly one in four children in the current decade. Unfortunately, obesity in the young population has been associated with cardiovascular, metabolic, neurological, and musculoskeletal diseases and premature death in adulthood. Accurately detecting overweight and obesity in children is critical to initiating timely interventions.

For nearly a generation, weight-to-height ratio charts and BMI for age and sex have been used to diagnose children with obesity. However, these assessment tools are inaccurate in childhood and adolescence since they do not distinguish fat from muscle mass. For instance, two children with similar BMI might have different proportions of fat and muscle mass which makes obesity diagnosis difficult.

Expensive tools such as the DEXA scan accurately measure the fat and muscle content of the body, but this device is not readily available in primary health care centres. Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a clinical guideline on childhood obesity and requested urgent research on inexpensive and accurate alternative measures of obesity.

Emerging studies in adults appear to suggest that waist circumference-to-height ratio predicts premature death better than BMI and could be a potential added tool to BMI measure in improving the diagnosis of obesity.

However, there has been no former evaluation of how much waist circumference-to-height ratio measurements agree with DEXA-measured fat mass and muscle mass during growth from childhood to young adulthood. In addition, the threshold of waist circumference-to-height ratio needed to detect excess fat in children is not clear, which is why this study was carried out.

The research included 7,237 children (51 per cent females) aged nine years who were followed-up until age 24 years from Children of the 90s data. Their BMI and waist circumference-to-height ratio were measured at ages 9, 11, 15, 17, and 24 years. When different devices measure a variable with an exact resemblance, it is described as perfect agreement of the devices with a score of 100 per cent. For example, two DEXA scans from different manufacturers would measure fat mass with a near-perfect agreement of 99 to 100 per cent.

Waist circumference-to-height ratio had a very high agreement of 81 – 89 per cent with DEXA-measured total body fat mass and trunk fat mass, but a low agreement with muscle mass (24 – 39 per cent). BMI had a slightly high agreement with total fat mass and trunk fat mass (65 – 72 per cent) and muscle mass (52 – 0.58 per cent). Since BMI had a slightly high agreement with DEXA-measured muscle mass, it is difficult to specify whether BMI measures excess fat or muscle mass.

The optimal waist circumference-to-height ratio cut points that predicted the 95th percentile of total fat mass in males was 0.53 and 0.54 in females.This cut point detected eight out of ten males and seven out of ten females who truly had excess DEXA-measured fat. The cut point also identified 93 out of 100 males and 95 out of 100 females who truly do not have excess fat.

Dr Andrew Agbaje, Physician and Pediatric Clinical Epidemiologist at the University of Eastern Finland, said: “This study provides novel information that would be useful in updating future childhood obesity guidelines and policy statements. The average waist circumference-to-height ratio in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood is 0.45, it does not vary with age and among individuals like BMI.

“Waist circumference-to-height ratio might be preferable to BMI assessment in children and adolescent clinics as an inexpensive tool for detecting excess fat. Parents should not be discouraged by the BMI or weight of their children but can inexpensively confirm whether the weight is due to increase in excess fat by examining their child’s waist circumference-to-height ratio.”

Julian Hamilton-Shield, Professor in Diabetes and Metabolic Endocrinology in the Bristol Medical School: Translational Health Science (THS), commenting on the study, added: “This present study from Dr Agbaje confirms the continued value of the Children of the 90s longitudinal cohort, whilst strengthening the evidence for waist-height ratio being a key measure of adiposity. Examining the same cohort, we believe this simple measure adds value in identifying those most at risk of obesity-related liver disease across the life course.”

Source: University of Bristol

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femuscleblog · 5 months

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#health and fitness #BMI #muscle women #female muscle #female bodybuilding #weight management #health science

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cuntwrap--supreme · 9 months

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So they won't do my tubal unless I can get my BMI down to 25 - meaning I'd have to be 140lbs. Said they can't do it at my current weight 170 (30BMI) because obesity makes it harder to see organs or some nonsense. But like... I'm not that fat. Realistically, I think I could lose maybe 15-20lbs before I lost an unhealthy amount of fat. Almost all of what's being counted as fat is muscle. And I tried explaining that to the doctor and tried telling her BMI is bullshit anyway but she insisted. So now, if I actually want to be sterilized, I have to somehow drop 30lbs, which is gonna mean atrophying muscles I've worked so hard to get. Think it's valid that I'm fucking pissed.

#bmi #weight #bullshit medicine #fake science #bmi is fake in case anyone didn't know #it's based on 'ideals' which any scientist knows don't exist in large enough numbers to matter #it doesn't account for build at all and assumes all weight above a certain point is fat #which is stupid #and a bad way to measure actual health #doc even said i don't look 170lbs. because I'm not actually obese contrary to what the bmi says #but whatever #still gotta do it or it won't get done!#so that's fun!!! 🙃

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raveninrecovery · 11 months

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whatbigotspost · 11 months

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Some good news! The AMA is getting on the right side of some important stuff this week:

I’m the first to bring out snide, “gender affirming care is GOOD?!?????” And “the BMI is racist, fatphobic junk science?!???? CALL THE PRESSES!!!!” comments but I’m taking a sec to acknowledge this is actually really, really good.

The AMA is the largest professional association of medical physicians and carries enormous sway and power. We need them to move the needle on this shit, even if it is frustrating they feel years behind.

#gender affirming care #American medical association #BMI #fatphobia #racism #medical racism #medical fatphobia

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mostlysignssomeportents · 23 days

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General Mills and cheaply bought "dietitians" co-opted the anti-diet movement

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in NEXT THURSDAY (Apr 11) in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroehttps://cockeyed.com/lessons/viagra/viagra.html, then PROVIDENCE, RI (Apr 12), and beyond!

Steve Bannon isn't wrong: for his brand of nihilistic politics to win, all he has to do is "flood the zone with shit," demoralizing people to the point where they no longer even try to learn the truth.

This is really just a more refined, more potent version of the tactical doubt sown by Big Tobacco about whether smoking caused cancer, a playbook later adopted by the fossil fuel industry to sell climate denial. You know Darrell Huff's 1954 classic How To Lie With Statistics? Huff was a Big Tobacco shill (his next book, which wasn't ever published, was How To Lie With Cancer Statistics). His mission wasn't to help you spot statistical malpractice – an actual thing that is an actual problem that you should actually learn to spot. It was to turn you into a nihilist who didn't believe anything could be known:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

Corporations don't need you to believe that their products are beneficial or even non-harmful. They just need you to believe nothing. If you don't know what's true, then why not just do whatever feels good, man? #YOLO!

These bannonfloods of shit are a favored tactic of strongmen and dictators. Their grip on power doesn't depend on their citizens trusting them – it's enough that they trust no one:

http://jonathanstray.com/networked-propaganda-and-counter-propaganda

Bannonflooding is especially beloved of the food industry. Food is essential, monopolized, and incredibly complicated, and many of the most profitable strategies for growing, processing and preparing food are very bad for the people who eat that food. Rather than sacrificing profits, the food industry floods the zone with shit, making it impossible to know what's true, in hopes that we will just eat whatever they're serving:

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2003460

Now, the "nothing can be known" gambit only works if it's really hard to get at the truth. So it helps that nutrition and diet are very complex subjects, but it helps even more that the nutrition and diet industry are a cesspool of quacks and junk science. This is a "scientific discipline" whose prestigious annual meetings are sponsored (and catered) by McDonald's:

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/05/my-trip-mcdonalds-sponsored-nutritionist-convention/

It's a "science" whose most prominent pitchmen peddle quack nostrums and sue the critics who point out (correctly) that eating foods high in chlorophyll will not "oxygenate your blood" (hint, chlorophyll only makes oxygen in the presence of light, which is notably lacking in your colon):

https://www.badscience.net/2007/02/ms-gillian-mckeith-banned-from-calling-herself-a-doctor/

When the quack-heavy world of nutrition combines with the socially stigmatized world of weight-loss, you get a zone ripe for shitflooding. The majority of Americans are "overweight" (according to a definition that relies on the unscientific idea of BMI) and nearly half of Americans are "obese." These numbers have been climbing steadily since the 1970s, and every diet turns out to be basically bullshit:

https://headgum.com/factually-with-adam-conover/what-does-ozepmic-actually-do-with-dr-dhruv-khullar

Notwithstanding the new blockbuster post-Ozempic drugs, we're been through an unbroken 50-year run of more and more of us being fatter and fatter, even as fat stigma increased. Fat people are treated as weak-willed and fundamentally unhealthy, while the most prominent health-risks of being fat are roundly neglected: the mental health effects of being shamed, and the physical risks of having doctors ignore your health complaints, no matter how serious they sound, and blame them on your weight:

https://maintenancephase.buzzsprout.com/1411126/11968083-glorifying-obesity-and-other-myths-about-fat-people

Fat people and their allies have banded together to address these real, urgent harms. The "body acceptance" movement isn't merely about feeling good in your own skin: it's also about fighting discrimination, demanding medical care (beyond "lose some weight") and warning people away from getting on the diet treadmill, which can lead to dangerous eating disorders and permanent weight gain:

https://www.beacon.org/You-Just-Need-to-Lose-Weight-P1853.aspx

Fat stigma is real. The mental health risks of fat-shaming are real. Eating disorders are real. Discrimination against fat people is real. The fact that these things are real doesn't mean that the food industry can't flood the zone with shit, though. On the contrary: the urgency of these issues, combined with the poor regulation of dietitians, makes the "what should you eat" zone perfect for flooding with endless quantities of highly profitable shit.

Perhaps you've gotten some of this shit on you. Have you found yourself watching a video from a dietitian influencer like Cara Harbstreet, Colleen Christensen or Lauren Smith, promoting "health at any size" with hashtags like #DerailTheShame and #AntiDiet? These were paid campaigns sponsored by General Mills, Pepsi, and other multinational, multibillion-dollar corporations.

Writing for The Examination, Sasha Chavkin, Anjali Tsui, Caitlin Gilbert and Anahad O'Connor describe the way that some of the world's largest and most profitable corporations have hijacked a movement where fat people and their allies fight stigma and shame and used it to peddle the lie that their heavily processed, high-calorie food is good for you:

https://www.theexamination.org/articles/as-obesity-rises-big-food-and-dietitians-push-anti-diet-advice

It's a surreal tale. They describe a speech by Amy Cohn, General Mills’ senior manager for nutrition, to an audience at a dietitian's conference, where Cohn "denounced the media for 'pointing the finger at processed foods' and making consumers feel ashamed of their choices." This is some next-level nihilism: rather than railing against the harmful stigma against fat people, Cohn wants us to fight the stigma against Cocoa Puffs.

This message isn't confined to industry conferences. Dietitians with large Tiktok followings like Cara Harbstreet then carry the message out to the public. In Harbstreet's video promoting Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs and Trix, she says, "I will always advocate for fearlessly nourishing meals, including cereal…Because everyone deserves to enjoy food without judgment, especially kids":

https://www.tiktok.com/@streetsmart.rd/video/7298403730989436206

Dietitians, nutritionists and the food industry have always had an uncomfortably close relationship, but the industry's shitflooding kicked into high gear when the FDA proposed rules limiting which foods the industry can promote as "healthy." General Mills, Kelloggs and Post have threatened a First Amendment suit against such a regulation, arguing that they have a free speech right to describe manifestly unhealthy food as "healthy."

The anti-diet movement – again, a legitimate movement aimed at fighting the dangerous junk science behind dieting – has been co-opted by the food industry, who are paying dietitian influencers to say things like "all foods have value" while brandishing packages of Twix and Reese's. In their Examination article, the authors profile people who struggled with their weight, then, after encountering the food industry's paid disinformation, believed that "healthy at any size" meant that it would be unhealthy to avoid highly processed, high calorie food. These people gained large amounts of weight, and found their lives constrained and their health severely compromised.

I've been overweight all my life. I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting when I was 12. I come from a family of overweight people with the chronic illnesses often associated with being fat. This is a subject that's always on my mind. I even wrote a whole novel about the promise and peril of a weight-loss miracle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429969284/makers

I think the anti-diet movement, and its associated ideas like body acceptance and healthy at every size, are enormously positive developments and hugely important. It's because I value these ideas that I'm so disgusted with Big Food and its cynical decision to flood the zone with shit. It's also why I'm so furious with dietitians and nutritionists for failing to self-regulate and become a real profession, the kind that censures and denounces quacks and shills.

I have complicated feelings about Ozempic and its successors, but even if these prove to be effective and safe in the long term, and even if we rein in the rapacious pharma companies so that they no longer sell a $5 product for $1000, I would still want dietary science to clean up its act:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2816824

I'm not a nihilist. I think we can use science to discover truths – about ourselves and our world. I want to know those truths, and I think they can be known. The only people who benefit from convincing you that the truth is unknowable are the people who want to lie to you.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/05/corrupt-for-cocoa-puffs/#flood-the-zone-with-shit

#pluralistic #corruption #nutrition #food #diets #dieticians #nutritionists #junk science #junk food #astroturf #fat acceptance #fatphobia #health #nihilism #steve bannon #flood the zone with shit #general mills #dietitians

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britishchick09 · 2 years

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the rewrite trio’s weight/bmi along with real people that share theirs!

#idk what a bmi is all i know is that raoulstine are good!#and that the real people pics give an idea of how they'd be irl #i love how happy the shirtless guy is! :D #him and the girl make it a pool party! :D #...and then there's slightly unnerving emo boi #it's very accurate!#it's literally them in the swimsuit pic i drew last month! ;D #the girl pic is actually about 120 pounds but it looks the same visually #raoul's bmi is a bit less than christine's but who knows he could have some muscle like the smiley guy ;)#and erik is is a healthy eater (he has a big appetite!) he just can't gain weight because of marfan's syndrome #i was about to say it's mysterious like his face but then i remembered 'oh yeah! i scienced that already!' :D #his face is still mysterious tho ;)#also the height/weight website really shows how tall rewrite erik is #i put raoul's height at the bottom of the screen and 6 ft 3 was at the very top! :o #erik is a long boi!#poto rewritten

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hyggehooligan · 2 years

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About how many times is the normal amount of times to check the BMI calculator every day?

#tw ed #tw: ed #ed #disordered eating thoughts #eating disorder thoughts #bmi #science

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aj-ofmars · 2 years

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Since the BMI is bullshit I think it'd be interesting to revisit the age of maturity thing. A series of tests done on THREE seperate groups of people to see if maturity stops or is stunted.

Those who have to work with little education. Those who went through full education and work fulltime with no time for personal growth. And those who are deeply free to runaway to far away countries living charmed lives because they are just that fucking rich and can eat, read, paint, and learn as their heart desires without limit. People always talk about how we only access like 10 percent of our brains (though that is a different concept). Maybe developement in a different system of work life balance could change the results.

#work life #work life balance #theory #bmi #research #college #maturity #experiment #science #neuroscience #development #2023 #ajofmars #genz #millenials

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es-draws · 3 months

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If You Gain Faster, Does It Go to Your Belly?

Strap in folks, we’re going to take a deep dive into the Science of Weight Gain™. And for those impatient readers, the answer is…

Yes! Gaining weight quickly does seem to lead to more belly gains

As a precursor, I am not a doctor or medical researcher. I thought this study was interesting, and wanted to talk about it! But please don't take this as advice. Please don't go and gain based on the information presented here.

Let's start with some definitions. What types of fat are there? There are generally two categories - subcutaneous and visceral. Subcutaneous is the fat we all know and love; the soft fat that forms just under your skin, and is most commonly associated with the appearance of being "fat". This fat can form anywhere on the body, and is generally considered to be the healthier kind of fat. Then there is visceral fat, which is fat that accumulates deep in the abdomen behind the muscle layer. This kind of fat leads to a "ball belly" or "apple" shape, where the midsection is rounded but also firm, since fat is under muscle. Visceral fat surrounds organs, and for that reason is generally considered to have higher health risks.

Next, when you gain weight, what normally contributes to where the weight will go? There's a lot of research that shows this is mostly determined by genetics. What foods you eat, what exercises you do, and other environmental factors contribute little to where the weight goes[1]. In general, people tend to gain more subcutaneous fat than visceral fat[2].

So now to the question at hand - anecdotally among gainers, it's said that if you gain weight quickly, it will go to the belly. Is this true?

Turns out, a study has already been done on this very subject.

Let's talk about the Science™

23 subjects (15 men, 8 women) - all of whom were relatively thin (23.6 BMI) - were placed on an "overfeeding interval" of 8 weeks, where they were given 400–1200 extra calories over their normal intake. This was done in the form of ice cream shakes, snickers bars, or boost meal supplements[3]. In particular, this overfeeding period is similar to a lot of the rapid weight gain methods used in the feedism community.

Participants were weighed daily, and body fat was measured at the beginning and end of the study. Body fat was broken down into 3 categories; visceral fat, upper-body subcutaneous fat (fat around the midsection), and lower-body subcutaneous fat (fat around the butt and thighs).

Here are the results: on average, subjects on average weighed 158 lbs to start, and gained around 8 lbs over two months. On average, they gained 1 lb of visceral fat, 2 lbs of lower body fat, and 4.5 lbs of upper body fat.

What does this mean? It means that during rapid weight gain, over half of the fat gained goes to the belly. But importantly, it goes to subcutaneous fat - the fat directly under the skin that we associate with soft, jiggly bellies. Very little went to the visceral fat associated with firm, round bellies.

Anecdotally, this seems to correlate with what’s commonly seen with rapid weight gain in the feedism community. Most gainers, especially thinner gainers, tend to notice rounder bellies when they first put on weight. But this weight also tends to be soft - often times, gainers can still squeeze and squish their midsection, which seems to prove fat has built up just under the skin. Later, once they've gained more or the weight has settled, the fat may distribute more evenly over the body. Again, this is just anecdotal. But the data seems to support what we see!

There are still some things this study does not answer. There's no data published on biological differences, for example. There are almost double the amount of men compared to women in the study, and AMAB folks are known to gain more upper body weight compared to AFAB folks. We do not know if these participants are gaining in different ways. Also, while subjects were on average at a healthy BMI when the study began, we know that BMI is a flawed metric. It does not mean they were all thin. Some may have been overweight, or may have gained weight or lost weight previously. These factors might also contribute where weight is likely to settle, and we cannot infer from the published data alone.

And though this study shows that gaining weight quickly will lead to belly gains, it doesn’t answer why. For this I have a theory, but that will have to wait for the next installment of the Science of Weight Gain™.

So there you have it! If belly gains are what you’re searching for, gain and gain quickly! But be careful… once you start, it may be hard to stop. And soon you may find that your newly-formed belly is just the start.

[1]There's research showing sugar-dense and high-fat foods leads to more visceral fat gains, but proportionally this is very small compared to genetic or sex factors.

[2]AMAB folks, in particular, are more likely to gain visceral fat.

[3]This study sounds like a feeder's dream and it gets my blood up just reading it. How do I become an official Science Feeder™?

#this is the inspiration for my next art project #look for more to come in this series!#science of weight gain #es-thinks

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