Research
Energy balance
Waist circumference (WC) is a superior predictor for certain co-morbidities (diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease, stroke, gallbladder disease) compared to Body Mass Index (BMI) alone.
Don't just rely on the scale. Measuring your waist circumference provides a more accurate picture of your health risk for heart disease and diabetes than BMI alone. If you have excess weight around your midsection, your risk is higher, even if your BMI is in the 'overweight' rather than 'obese' range.
StrongQualifiesHIGH confidence
WC measurements were considered to be the better risk predictor for some co-morbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, stroke and gallbladder disease... Therefore, when the RRs based on WC measurements for these co-morbidities were available, they were pooled separately from those based on BMI and used as the final RRs for these co-morbidities.
Why this rating
Based on the systematic review's methodology of selecting the best available RR for each condition.
Source
The incidence of co-morbidities related to obesity and overweight: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Daphne Guh et al. · BMC Public Health · 2009
DOI 10.1186/1471-2458-9-88
Meta-analysis · 89 studiesCited 3,849×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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