This article was originally published on Healthline
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Body curvature index is a new measure of body composition touted as a more accurate alternative to body mass index.
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In a large retrospective study of 33,000 U.S. adults, researchers found a “U”-shaped curve, indicating that those with BIS below and above normal had an increased risk of death from any cause. the cause.
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The study also found that over a 20-year period, the BIS showed an increasing trend, another indicator of the obesity epidemic in the United States.
Is “body curvature” a good indicator of your weight and health risks? New research says yes.
Scientists are turning to a new way of calculating obesity using a system known as the body curvature index, touted as a more accurate measure than the body mass index (BMI).
In a new study published in Open JAMA Network, Researchers found that a higher BIS was associated with an increased risk of death from any cause in a large retrospective study of nearly 33,000 U.S. adults.
This research provides further confirmation of the growing obesity epidemic in the United States, but is also an indicator of a potential new tool in the fight against obesity. The authors conclude that the BIS is almost as simple a tool to implement as the BMI, but provides a more accurate assessment of body composition and health risks.
“Our results provide compelling evidence for the application of BIS as a non-invasive and easily obtainable screening tool for mortality risk estimation and identification of high-risk individuals, a novel concept that could be incorporated into public health practice pending consistent validation in other independent studies. studies,” the authors wrote.
Body curvature and mortality risk
The study included health data from a large cohort of nearly 33,000 American adults. The researchers pulled data from the NHANES Health Database, a self-reported survey that assesses the health and nutrition of Americans.
The researchers looked at a 20-year period of NHANES data between 1999 and 2018. The average age of the cohort members was 46 years old. Half of the group was made up of women. The group was predominantly white (68.26%), but also included blacks (10.92%) and Mexican Americans (8.53%).
Then, using the BIS, which is a slightly more complex body measurement than BMI, they assessed a major outcome: all-cause mortality. Major observation: a “U” curve of mortality risk associated with the BRI score. A U-shaped curve, as the name suggests, shows high risk at each end of a given spectrum and lower risk in the middle.
In this case, people with a BIS below and above normal were at greater risk of death from any cause. Meanwhile, those in the middle, within the normal range, had the lowest risk. People with a BIS below 3.4 had a 25% increased risk of mortality compared to the normal range, while those with a BIS of 6.9 had a 49% increased risk.
Beverly Tchang, MD, an endocrinologist, spokesperson for the Obesity Society, and assistant professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, told Healthline, “It’s worth them looking at other measures of adiposity given the known limits of body mass index (BMI). ).
“This is a more direct measure of central adiposity, which is strongly correlated with metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes,” she added.
Researchers also documented a steady increase in the average BIS over a 20-year period, from 4.8 to 5.62. The trend was more evident among certain groups, including women, older adults and those who identified as Mexican-American.
What is the body curvature index?
Body curvature index is similar to body mass index, but relies on more anthropometric variables.
The BIS, first proposed in 2013, uses height, weight, waist circumference and sometimes hip circumference for its calculation. Add a little theory from 17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler and you have BIS.
Diana M. Thomas, PhD, professor of mathematics at the United States Military Academy at West Point, authored the initial article detailing the concept of the BIS, who explained the concept to Healthline:
“It has to do with geometry. So if you look at body mass index, you can find a geometric explanation.
Using the necessary variables, you create the image of a circle, but the circle can be more egg-shaped, cylindrical, or perhaps totally round. It uses the concept of “eccentricity”, which Johannes Kepler used to quantify planetary orbits. Eccentricity describes how round (like a circle) or narrow (like an ellipse) something is. It represents a number between zero, for a perfect circle, and one.
“With BMI, you’re really only using two measurements. You use weight and height. In the Body Roundness Index, we use a few extra measurements on the human body to capture that shape,” Thomas said.
This BIS number can then be used to make a more accurate calculation of body composition. The closer you are to zero, the rounder your body and the greater the risk of all-cause mortality.
How BMI Compares
BMI is a simple measure of body size based on your height and weight, used for decades as a general assessment of health. Your BMI is a rough measure of whether or not you are within a healthy weight range. However, the measurement is far from perfect: it doesn’t distinguish between muscle and fat, for example; So an obese person could very likely have the same BMI as, say, a bodybuilder.
Even with its flaws, BMI remains an important indicator of future health problems. The higher than normal your BMI is (anything above 25), the higher your risk of developing problems like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
BMI vs. CKD
There is a lot of criticism of BMI, but there is no indication that it is going anywhere.
BMI is easy to assess in a doctor’s office or at home. Meanwhile, measuring body fat is more difficult, more expensive, and more time-consuming. This is not something that can be easily done in an exam.
However, BIS could offer a new method of assessing body composition and health risks, in a way that is still simple to implement but provides a more accurate assessment. Forget all this talk about Kepler’s orbital eccentricities, you don’t need to actually know physics or geometry to do a BRI test. You just need a few measurements. In fact, you can even plug them into an online calculator if you’re curious about your own BIS.
BIS is still a new technique that requires further validation, which the study authors note in their paper, so it is far from commonplace today.
Chiang also notes that the name itself could pose a barrier to its future use: “I don’t think BRI is going to catch on just because ’roundness’ is a potentially offensive term,” she said.
The essential
Researchers used 20 years of U.S. health data to examine mortality risk using body curvature index.
The BIS is a new body composition test first offered in 2013 that some experts say offers a more accurate alternative to BMI that is just as easy to perform.
The study found evidence confirming the obesity epidemic in the United States by gradually increasing the BIS over a twenty-year period. The authors also found a “U”-shaped curve indicating higher all-cause mortality risk for people with a BIS above and below the normal range.
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