Body Mass Index faulted as tool to gauge heart risk
....And now some researchers from the Mayo Clinic are saying the BMI is just too blunt to be trusted. A study found that patients with a low BMI had a higher risk of death from heart disease than those with normal BMI, according to the research published in the Aug. 19 issue of The Lancet. At the same time, overweight patients had better survival rates and fewer heart problems than those with a normal BMI.

Where does BMI fall apart? First, it was never meant to do anything more than screen a large population, and it's used primarily because it's easy and cheap. But doctors often employ it to measure bone-mineral density and heart-attack risk.

There's a growing sentiment that this is a mistake. A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Densitometry found that weight alone is a much better predictor of bone-mineral density than BMI.

And when it comes to heart-
attack risk, your waist-to-hip ratio, which measures fat distribution, also tells doctors more than BMI, according to Italian researcher Maria Grazia Franzosi. (People with more weight around their waist are at greater risk of heart disease and diabetes than those with weight around their hips.)
Also, BMI can't differentiate between body fat and muscle mass, so highly trained athletes can have a high BMI and not be overweight. The most extreme example is that, in his prime, as Mr. Universe, Arnold Schwarz-
enegger's BMI was 33. That qualifies as obese.....MORE... Body Mass Index faulted as tool to gauge heart risk