Measure your shapes

The body mass index was proposed to be replaced by the body shape index

Copper news based on the materials of City College of New York: New Study Supports Body Shape Index as Predictor of MortalityA new method for assessing the risk of premature death associated with abdominal fat deposits – the Body Shape Index (A Body Shape Index, ABSI) – is a more effective prognostic factor than the body mass index (BMI) commonly used as a health indicator.

This conclusion is made by the ABSI developers based on the results of their research, whose results are published in the journal PLoS ONE (Dynamic Association of Mortality Hazard with Body Shape).

ABSI was developed in 2012 by the employees of The City College of New York, Nir and Jesse Krakauer (Nir Krakauer, Jesse Krakauer), who were based on data from a number of scientific studies showing that excessive accumulation of fat in the abdominal cavity leads to the development of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and, as a result, increases the risk of premature death. ABSI is calculated depending on gender, age, height, weight and waist circumference (you can use the calculator here).

To test the effectiveness of ABSI as a means of predicting such a risk, the Krakowers and their colleagues used data on 7,011 adult participants in two large-scale population health and lifestyle studies conducted in the UK in the mid-1980s and seven years later (HALS1 and HALS2). The participants represented a representative cross-section of the country's population by gender, age, social status, nationality, and so on. By 2009, 2203 of them had died from various causes. The authors conducted a comparative analysis of the relationship between the level and causes of overall mortality with ABSI, as well as with other indicators – BMI, waist circumference, waist-hip circumference ratio, waist circumference and height.

As a result, the authors concluded that ABSI is a strict statistical indicator of the risk of premature death – each step of increasing the index is associated with a 13 percent increase in the indicator. Among HALS participants whose ABSI was in the upper 20 percent range of values, the risk of premature death was 61 percent higher than those whose index was in the lower 20 percent range.

Thanks to the seven–year interval between two HALS studies, the authors were able to establish that ABSI is a dynamic indicator of health status - the accumulation of abdominal fat in an individual over time and, accordingly, an increase in the index correlates with an increase in his risk of premature death and vice versa. The Krakauers plan to undertake further studies designed to determine the impact of lifestyle and other factors on ABSI and the risk of premature death.

Recall that in August 2013, experts on obesity, diabetes and metabolic disorders from the University of Pennsylvania suggested that the medical community stop considering body mass index as a universal indicator of an individual's health. According to endocrinologists, the main disadvantage of this method is the fact that the calculation does not take into account many complex factors that affect the final indicators of human health, such as the localization of fat deposits, the ratio of fat deposits and muscle mass, age, race, gender, heredity, and so on.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru25.02.2014