YOUR HEALTH

WHO, BMI and more madness

The United Nations World health organization is again pushing the panic button.

In the last 40 years, the number of obese youth (ages 5 – 19) worldwide has risen from 11 million in 1975 to 124 million in 2015.

And WHO predicts that by 2022, more than 50% of all children world-wide will be obese.[i]

Of course, the criteria used is the BMI which, as I have criticized before, is a very poor tool to use for anyone outside the original sample population: primarily Caucasian males above age 18.

That the BMI scale does not take into account ethnicity and diverse gene pools and hereditary body shapes is now well established[ii].  It is also not meant to be used for those under age 18, i.e., growing children, who go though puberty and other radical body shifts re: height, muscle development and body fat.

The fact WHO states obesity is rampant in the far off and yet to be ‘developed’ island countries of Nauru (33.4% of girls and 14.7% of boys) and Cook islands (33.3% of boys) should be a cautionary warning that something is seriously amiss in their analysis and BMI toolⁱ!

These islands attract tourists galore with their pristine beaches, tropical flora and fauna and natives who preserve their culture and traditional cuisine!   The nearest McDonalds to Cook Islands is 2851 km away![iii] And the same applies to KFC as numerous online tourists mention as complaints.

And as for Nauru, the nearest would be found in Auckland, New Zealand, over 4,000 km away and 22 hourts by airplane!.[iv]

As well, WHO seems to think that when more and more of the world’s population -- and young -- are no longer starving to death or on meager diets that induce minimal muscle and bone development, that such people are becoming ‘unhealthy’.

Being able to eat 2 or 3 times a day with a greater variety of foods seems to be, in the eyes of WHO, a bad thing.

So ignore their paranoid obesity data and projections based on an unreliable and poor-at-best gauge, the BMI.

New alternatives

Two new methods hoping to replace the BMI focus on the abdomen.

As noted by Dr. Philip Maffetone, the health risk for Type 2 diabetes and heart disease is increased with excessive abdominal fat which buildsup around the internal organs; and people who fall within ‘normal’ BMI scores can easily have excessive and dangerous internal fat levelsⁱⁱ.

the problem is not overall weight which the BMI tries to measure, but being ‘overfat’ or ‘metabolic obesity’ in the abdomen.  According to his recently published study, 84.5% of adult Canadian males and 68.5% of Canadian females are overfatⁱⁱ.

His preferred, professional measuring method involves a special x-ray known as DMX, dual x-ray absorptionmetry.

For normal, quick assessment, Maffetone recommends measuring one’s circumference at the belly button and dividing by one’s height. This waist to height ratio should be under 0.5 if the person has a health fat level.

“Basically, our waist should be less than half our height,” he saysⁱⁱ.

A second, new measuring system has been created by the Mayo Clinic associated company, BVI America LLC.

This uses a special app and software to analyze a person’s body based on a full front and side photos (taken by a trained professional).  The app calculates the ratio between overall body volume and abdominal volume.  The ‘healthy range’ is 0 to 10.[v]

Reality check

I am 6’3” tall and am age 70, and regularly wear pants that I purchased 30 years ago! 

I belong to a well known, fitness club and exercise 2 to 4 times a week using dumbbells and all the latest equipment. 

While this makes me more muscular, my belly button circumference is the same as it has been for decades and can vary from 42” in the morning (after using the toilet) up to 45” by evening after having 3 square/full meals.

, I weigh anywhere from a morning 236 lbs (after using the toilet) during the heat of summer when I normally have only 2 meals a day, and up to 254 lbs by bedtime in winter after 3 full meals or a party banquet.

So my weight is not fixed: it varies from day to day depending on whether I eat 2 meals or 3 meals, and I have distinct summer and winter ranges based on overall activity and heat vs cold.

My scores:

·        BMI -  is just over 30  =  OBESE range.  According to the BMI, a person of my height should not weigh any more than 200 lbs to be ‘healthy” = score of 25[vi]

·        Maffetone’s system – At 236 lbs I score  0.56 and after 3 full meals at 254 lbs I score 0.60. So I am ‘overfat’ and ‘unhealthy’ all the time.

·        BVI method – who knows?

Conclusion -  The BMI is not a useful or an accurate indicator of health and              I suspect the same is true of Maffetone’s system as Dr. Maffetone claims over 2/3 of all Canadian adults are ‘overfat’ and unhealthy.

Canadians today live far longer than any generation in the past thanks mainly to the availability of abundant and varied foods.

The mania and panic over weight and body fat is lunacy!!!

Instead, I rely on 3 things:

1.      Insurance company studies have long shown that people who are 10% heavier than any ‘ideal range’ actually live longer.  That extra fat allows people to survive: not only during famines but during illness and surgeries that lead to weight lose.  

That ‘extra cushion’ prevents the body from dropping below its ‘tipping point’ into anorexia, organ failure and death.

2.     Having abdominal body fat is now being recognized as essential for surviving all kinds of injuries and blows to the midsection as this fat keeps the various internal organs from ‘bouncing around’ and ‘hitting each other’ – which would result in organ bruising and ruptures.

Put simply, having abdominal fat is essential for surviving everyday falls, punches to the body, sports tackles, body checks and car crashes, to name the most obvious situations.

FINALLY,

      3  The best and easiest gauge of excess body fat is the old Phys. Ed. Class                                                           standard:

While in front of a mirror or a partner, pinch the bare flesh on either side of the belly button between your thumb and index finger and see how high/thick the roll is.   If your roll is up to 1 inch high, you are fine.

If the roll is about ½ inch or so, you are very trim or skinny, and if you get close to zero, you are an all muscle Olympic grade athlete or anorexic.

                               __________________________________________________________________

BMI        Metric system    =     Mass (Kilograms)  / height (Meters)² 

             Imperial system =  Mass (Pounds)  x 703 ^{(conversion factor to metric)} / height (Inches)²

Maffetone -    Belly button circumference / height = number (under 0.5 is ‘healthy’)

BVI  - Using photographs and computer technology,  calculate                                      abdomen volume / body volume = number (0 to 10 is ‘healthy’)

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[i] “Obesity rates see tenfold increase in 40 years: WHO”, G&M, October 12, 2017, A10-11.

[ii] “ Does this make me look ‘Overfat’?”, G&M October 2, 2018, L1, L3.

[iii]https://www.facebook.com/pacificresortrarotonga/photos/a.116333458381026.20916.113596651988040/1261142770566750/?type=3 and

http://www.cookislands.org.uk/rarotonga%20cook%20islands%20capital.html#.Wh8lekqnG1s

^iv  ttps://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3775365&pagenumber=2 and https://www.google.ca/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enCA690CA691&ei=VCgfWtPbLajejwSKl6m4Dg&q=distance+of+Auchland+to+Nauru&oq=distance+of+Auchland+to+Nauru&gs_l=psy-ab.3...7380.9922.0.10401.12.12.0.0.0.0.98.995.12.12.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.2.190...0i13i30k1j0i13i5i30k1.0.2d9oau6pXrE

[v]  “ Is BVI the new BMI?”, G&M October 2, 2018, L3.

[vi] Used BMI calculator at http://calculators.fattyweightloss.com/bmi/

YOUR HEALTH and MEDIA

The End of Contact Sports is Nigh

Don’t be surprised if within 5 years all contact sports radically change or else become banned.

This applies to individual sports such as boxing and UFC and any martial art that involves forceful blows to the head, and team sports such as football and hockey.

Repeat concussions and their serious, debilitating and life shortening effects are now well known and the topic most recently of Ken Dryden’s new book, Game Change: The Life and Death of Steve Montador and the Future of Hockey, which highlights the short 35 year life of dedicated hockey player Steve Montador[1].

Ongoing mental fuzziness and inability to focus one’s mind, attention and even one’s eyes, memory problems, depression and the snake pit of painkillers and other drugs are common.

I remember Eric Lindros, that giant as strong as a bull who dominated junior hockey and then the NHL, and was named one of the “100 Greatest NHL Players’.

His Wikipedia biography never mentions the C-word, concussion, but news of his repeated ’issues’ after blows to the head where well publicized at the time including interviews he gave the media upon his premature retirement in 2007 at age 34.

In the 1999-2000 season Eric Lindros, who often rushed with his head down, had 3 concussions and his Flyers career ended when in game 7 of the Eastern finals he received an open ice, legal, full blast shoulder to his head.

The great intimidator was never the same thereafter[2].

Recently, Lindros has been a major advocate for reform in all contact team sports re; concussions, and was instrumental in the push to make law in 2016 Rowan’s Law, named after a 17 year old high school female ruby player Rowan Stringer who died after suffering a second sports concussion in a single week in a rugby game[3]. Such overlapping trauma is now called Second Impact Syndrome and recognized as deadly[4]. 

Rugby players do not wear helmets and maybe that would have helped Rowan, but it is unlikely a helmet will achieve the holy grail of an injury proof head covering though all the equipment companies connected to the NHL and NFL as well as independents are trying.

More importantly, new research has uncovered another and more pervasive, unintended consequence of team contact sports: CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) which is a degenerate brain disease connected to repeated, high force body to body contact – as in hockey body checking or football tackling!

Put simply, the mere repeated jarring of the brain during repeated body hits can itself be as deadly or lead to dementia.

The recently published study of the brains of 111 early death NFL players found that 100 had CTE degeneration, a 99.1% correlation[5].

So Ken Dryden’s new crusade to have hits to the head in hockey outlawed and declared a penalty, intentional or accidental,: helmet to helmet contact, shoulder to helmet contact or stick work to the head, is laudatory but insufficient.

Public awareness alone will not bring about the needed transformations to hitless, European style/Peewee hockey nor replace tackling with the strips of fabric of flag football, but (class action) lawsuits – again and again -- in the multi-billions of dollars, will force all contact sports to radically change or become extinct.

The lawyers now smell lots of blood!

Otherwise, baseball, basketball, soccer and volleyball will alone rule the team sports world.

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[1] See article, “Enough!”, G&M, Saturday, October 14, 2017, F1 and F3.

[2] See Sports Illustrated article, https://www.si.com/nhl/2017/06/29/eric-lindros-concussions-flyers-where-are-they-now

[3] See above Sports Illustrated and http://nationalpost.com/features/rowans-law

[4] See https://completeconcussions.com/what-is-rowans-law/

[5] Time Magazine, Sept. 18, 2017, p, 26; “Former NFLers warn parents of CTE risk, G&M, Saturday, Oct. 14, 2017, S5;

YOUR HEALTH, the MEDIA and DO THE MATH 

Dementia Scare 

This week, a study published in the highly respected medical journal, The Lancet, has gained mass media attention. (See http://www.aljazeera.com/news/ 2017/07/lifestyle-cut-dementia-risk-lancet-170720072645780.html) 

It states that by 2050 there may well be over 100,000,000 people world-wide suffering from dementia.

The article also advises that 1/3 of these cases could be prevented by following a ‘brain healthy’ lifestyle. Here are their numbers as to the significance and impact of 9 key and avoidable factors.
I have added well known, common ‘solutions’. 

1. Staying in school until age 15 8% (Yes, schooling develops the brain.) 
2. Middle age to older hearing loss 9% (So get hearing aids.) 
3. Smoking 5% (Don’t start or stop ASAP) 
4. Depression 4% (Yes, there are treatments and medication that work.) 
5. Physical inactivity 3% (Walk more, run, jog or join a health club.) 
6. Social isolation 2% (Family and friends are important.) 
7. High blood pressure 2% (Again, medication helps.) 
8. Obesity 1% (See #5 and watch your calorie or ‘junk food’ intake.) 
9. Type 2 diabetes 1% (Again, medically manageable) 

 So, 1/3 of that 100 million figure is ‘preventable’ with better ‘lifestyle’ ‘choices’.

Unfortunately, some 67,000,000 dementia cases would, -- based on current medial knowledge -- be unavoidable. 

That a lot of people – or is it? 

Projected world population for 2050 is 9.8 billion. (See https://www.un.org/ development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2017.html) 

So do the MATH: 

The 100 million is 100,000,000 /9,800,000,000 = 1.02%.
 And if reduced by 1/3 by better ‘lifestyles’, the figure drops to 0.68%. 

Yes, as people now live longer and world population grows, the absolute number of dementia cases will surely rise. 

And, yes, it a devastating ‘slipping into the night’ as are Alzheimer’s, Parkinson MS, ALS, CANCER in all its diverse forms, and many others. 

But these 2050 extrapolated and projected dementia numbers are not extraordinary; quite the contrary. 

In 2014, it was estimated out of a U.S. population of just under 320,000,000, 1 in 738 or 368,320 people had dementia = 1.4%. 
(See http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/d/dementia/stats.htm) At the same time, 14,738,719 people in the U.S.A. had cancer = 4.6 % (https://www.google.ca/search?q=US+Cancer+statistics&rlz=1C1CHBF_ enCA690CA690&oq=US+Cancer+statistics&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.5206j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) 

 So while 100 million is a huge number and when projections 33 years into the future, seems ‘scary’ and almost apocalyptic, the number, taken in the context of projected world population and other deadly diseases, is not.

And I have too much faith in science and medical research to believe that no ‘cure’ or ‘preventative treatments’ will emerge in the 33 years remaining to 2050: to end dementia and Parkinson and Alzheimer’s, etc. world wide. 

As a final note, the ongoing North American fixation on OBESITY (poorly defined and exaggerated by BMI standards] is a mere 1% factor. 

Even smoking increases one’s risk by just 5%. 

So your best bet, if nothing else, is to complete high school and avoid loud music concerts or get hearing aids when needed. These two alone reduce your risk by 17%.