Body roundness index (BRI) — a measure of abdominal body fat and height that some believe better reflects proportion of body fat and visceral fat than body mass index (BMI) — may help to predict a person’s risk of developing cardiovascular disease, according to a new study.
https://newsroom.heart.org/news/measure-of-body-roundness-may-help-to-predict-risk-of-cardiovascular-disease
3 Comments
I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.124.034768
From the linked article:
Research Highlights:
– Body roundness index — a measure to reflect abdominal body fat and height that some health care professionals believe better reflects the proportion of body fat and visceral fat than body mass index — may help to predict a person’s risk of developing cardiovascular disease, according to a new study.
– The analysis of almost 10,000 adults in China older than age 45, conducted from 2011 to 2020, determined that having a higher body roundness index level over a 6-year period was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease by as much as 163%, even when medical, lifestyle and demographic factors were not considered.
– The study used data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), an ongoing, nationally representative study of middle-aged and older adults living in 28 provinces across China.
At 6’5” I have always been at the high scale of BMI .
I will say, in general, my weight has been ideal at around 220lbs. That’s still pretty high in the old BMI , because there was little factor for muscle v fat .
I like the BRI indicator a lot more.
FWIW I’ve lost around 50lbs since November. I’m going to ask my doctor to check my BRI and maybe get some surgery to eliminate some of the sagging skin and visceral fat that I’ve accumulated over the the years.
Thank you for sharing this!
Important to note here that BMI generally tends to underestimate obesity, not overestimate it. I support using abdominal adiposity as a better indicator of health outcomes – but I also feel that the Venn diagram of people who complain about erroneously being labelled obese due to muscle and the people who have enough muscle mass that this actually applies are two separate circles.