Mixed
Body Mass Index (BMI) is an inadequate and potentially misleading metric for assessing individual cardiometabolic risk because it fails to account for regional fat distribution and ectopic lipid deposition, which are the true drivers of disease.
Stop using BMI as your primary health metric. Instead, focus on waist circumference and metabolic markers (blood pressure, lipids, glucose). If you have a high BMI but a small waist and good metabolic markers, your risk may be low. Conversely, if you have a normal BMI but a large waist, your risk may be high. Prioritize lifestyle habits (diet quality, physical activity) that reduce visceral fat rather than just total weight.
BMI... only provides a crude assessment of the amount of body fat... this anthropometric index is of no use to assess individual variation in the regional distribution of body fat... results of genetic association studies linking BMI to cardiometabolic diseases suggest that most if not all of the contribution of BMI to cardiometabolic diseases is driven by central body fat distribution and not via a high BMI per se.
Why this rating
Supported by observational, genetic (Mendelian randomization), and mechanistic evidence from large cohorts (UK Biobank, Framingham).
Source
Adiposity, type 2 diabetes and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk: Use and abuse of the body mass index
Benoît J. Arsenault et al. · Atherosclerosis · 2024
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