Using your Health Patri to Understand BMI better

What is Health Patri?

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Health Patri is a comprehensive picture of a person’s overall health available on the JioHealthHub app. It is personal for one profile, and most importantly, it allows for multiple profiles of family members to be created by a single user, which will allow the person to view the entire family’s health profile in a single place.

What sections are available in Health Patri?

There are four main sections in Health Patri:

Key vitals
Conditions
Lifestyle
Physical Health

What does BMI mean?

Under the Lifestyle section, you will see BMI (Body Mass Index). Now to understand what your BMI means, let’s first have a look at why BMI is measured and what it measures. BMI is nothing but a calculation of body size, which takes into account a person’s height and weight.

BMI, in a way, is similar to those charts that indicate ideal weight for a particular height. BMI is a mathematical calculation between your height and weight expressed as a single number. In this way, ideal BMI is a depiction of good health. The value of BMI lies in the fact that it can be applied to all individuals across the entire population, by and large.

What is normal BMI?

A BMI between 18.5 and 25 is considered normal, that between 25 and 30 is considered above normal (person termed overweight), and a person with a BMI over 30 is considered obese. BMI less than 18.5 would mean that the person is underweight.

Why is BMI important?

According to the WHO, about three million deaths are linked to being overweight or obese. Higher risk of developing a wide range of conditions is associated with high BMI. Some of these conditions include diabetes, chronic liver disease, arthritis, hypertension, excess cholesterol, and difficulty breathing while asleep. Additionally, several types of cancer (such as those of the breast, colon, and prostate) are also linked to high BMI. Even independent of any disease, people with high BMIs have reported feeling better (both physically and psychologically) after losing excess weight.

Is BMI a perfect marker of health?

Well, unfortunately no. BMI may fluctuate during pregnancy or in a person with high muscle mass/athlete. It may not be a good tool to gauge the health of children and the elderly.

BMI is not a perfect parameter of health, but this can be said about other health parameters too. Other markers such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or high sugar are not predictive enough for heart health or diseases if used singly. However, that does not mean they are not good markers or that we should stop looking at them. On the contrary, all of these parameters when studied together can have excellent predictive value of heart health or otherwise.

It should also be remembered that BMI has more futuristic value and highlights impending issues that a person is more likely to develop over time. This is why health insurance companies use BMI as a major predictor of future health of a person to be insured.

Is BMI enough to indicate health?

Researchers are putting more ‘weight’ on how much body fat a person has and how it is distributed. Researchers have found that BMI alone may misclassify these people as healthy, even though they have high body fat. As said earlier, BMI may not be reliable in pregnant women, athletes, and elderly individuals.

What does BMI mean for us Indians?

The BMI cut-off for overweight or obesity that we use currently is largely based on white populations. It has been observed that body composition (including body fat percentage and/or muscle mass) can vary by ethnic group or race. Current BMI cut-off may be good enough to predict health status among White people, but may not be as accurate for people of other races.

The current cut-off of 25 to classify someone as healthy or overweight and 30 for obese will underestimate risk of heart health in Indians. In simple terms, the cut-off needs to be lower for Indians. Overlooking this fact may lead to less-than-required counseling, advice on lifestyle modification, and treatment of those who are on the threshold of becoming overweight or obese.

This thought was first provoked back in 2004 when two authors published an article in the reputed Lancet journal, where one author was Asian Indian and the other was White. Both had near-same BMI but the body fat percentage differed significantly (21.2% versus 9.1 in Indian and White author respectively).

So, if you see that your BMI is less than 25 but close to 25, it should ring a bell that with lower cut-offs for Indian population it would have been overweight already!

This is where Health Patri can be used to keep track of your BMI over a period of time. Why wait, make those lifestyle changes that you wanted to do and keep a check if your BMI decreases accordingly over a longer period of time. Using health bands or other IoT devices (and to get them to sync with your Health Patri) will help you keep a tab on your step count or exercise.

The bottom line

BMI may not be the single best parameter of health; however, it is surely a useful tool to reckon heart and metabolic health of the future. The Health Patri has BMI under its Lifestyle section and your BMI will keep reminding you if you need to make any lifestyle changes. Your shared Health Patri will also enable your doctor to keep track of your BMI and advise you accordingly.

Go ahead, use your Health Patri to the fullest!

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