Among all the numbers your healthcare provider records at your appointment — blood pressure, cholesterol, body temperature, etc. — your body mass index, or BMI, is the one that may be most likely to stick in your memory. BMI is a number based on your height and weight, which helps your provider determine whether you have obesity, overweight, within a normal range, or underweight.
BMI can be a sensitive topic, and it has its critics. “Unfortunately, there is no perfect tool [to measure one’s health],” says Anisha Abraham, MD, interim chief of the division of adolescent and young adult medicine at Children’s National Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. Instead, it is one of several measurement tools, including blood pressure, blood sugar, and others, that tell us different things and are pieces of a larger puzzle, she says.
Body fat percentage is another one. Frank Contacessa, MD, an internist in Armonk, New York, says that it’s a better factor to consider in a holistic health assessment. Still, it’s more challenging to measure than BMI.
Here’s an overview of how and why BMI is used, and what yours may mean.
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