The mistake that can easily get your claim denied is to fail

The Body Mass Index is one of the main prevention indicators for many specialties of health scientists (physicians, cardiologists, nutritionists, gymnasts) against premature deaths due to obesity, especially in men over 40 years. A simple arithmetic operation (division of body weight in kilograms by the square of height in meters), classifies people as underweight (with BMI up to 18.5), normal (from 18.5 to 25), overweight (from 25.1 up to 30) or obese (greater than 30). According to many experts, this indicator is considered false. Or, at least, inaccurate. A recent study by the University of California, Santa Barbara and UCLA found that 54 million Americans (or more than one-fifth of the US population) are overweight and obese based on their BMI. However, medical examinations of many of these "obese" citizens - and "candidates dying" of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer - revealed that they were perfectly healthy. The findings, published in the International Journal of Obesity, recorded the clinical values ​​of blood pressure, sugar and cholesterol in overweight people. What did the researchers find? "In the overweight category of BMI, 47% of potential sufferers were completely healthy," says Dr. Jeffrey Hunger, author and Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. . Hunger's words are a huge victory for those experts who for years expressed serious doubts against the BMI. And the issue has to do not only with the psychological or social impact that a person has in the higher ranks of the BMI, but also with the discrimination that exists by insurance companies, which charge higher insurance premiums for people whose BMI exceeds 25. The big truth: The Body Mass Index is a 200-year-old invention developed by the Belgian scientist Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet in 1820. He was not even a doctor. And at a time when knowledge about the human body was completely fragmentary compared to today. What should worry you the most? The fat in your belly.