decades, we have used the Body Mass Index (BMI) as an approximate but simple on the degree of overweight or obese person. However, it is being increasingly challenged by their limitations. Although more difficult to implement, Body Fat Index (IMF, for its initials in English) is much more reliable to see if a person is overweight or not. BMI, as probably everyone knows, is easily calculated by dividing weight in kilograms of an individual on the square of height in meters. For example, if a person weighs 80 kilograms and is 1.75 meters, her BMI is worth 80 / (1.75) 2 = 26.1. Then you can query a table indicating whether overweight or obese, and to what degree (calculate BMI).
The problem is that overweight is an excessive accumulation of fat that can be harmful to health as defined by WHO. From this definition, and how to calculate BMI, we realize that this index does not measure correctly overweight. For example, a low, muscular person could give a BMI of overweight, even without a gram of fat in the body. And, conversely, a healthy BMI (between 18.5 and 25) may correspond to someone tall and thin but with belly and abdominal fat accumulation that would pose health problems. So it would overweight from a metabolic standpoint.
Adding to that, another limitation is that BMI does not take into account the age or sex, means that scientists and experts have opted for the IMF, which is a measure much more faithful to the degree of obesity in an individual. This index is calculated by dividing the body fat of a person's height in meters squared. When interpreting the results, they go to a table that takes into account both age and sex of the individual.
Several studies in populations have confirmed that the IMF is higher than the BMI for determining overweight a person's real. However, the IMF is not without problems. The main one is the difficulty of finding a reliable measure of the amount of fat you have a body. There are several procedures, such as bioelectrical impedance, which gives us an approximate percentage of fat on the total weight. However, the apparatus of this type that could be used in the home for its reasonable cost have little reliability.
There are several devices more accurate, but reserved the professional healthcare sector because of its high price: more reliable bioimpedance, dual X-ray absorptiometry, plethysmography, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, among others. However, it seems clear that they are used exclusively by professionals is a serious drawback for most of the population, in order to meet its IMF.
Another problem that exists to implement the new index is still no unanimity among experts (unlike in the case of BMI) when interpreting the results. That is, a given IMF can be considered healthy for some experts, and equivalent to overweight for others. Although more comprehensive studies are needed on the matter can be concluded that the IMF is a valuable tool for diagnosing obesity.
Adelgazar.Net Article prepared by February 2011,
from Consumer information
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