Better Than BMI

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BMI is a very flawed system, and there are several more useful ways of measuring our bodies. Let’s take a look at them!

What’s wrong with BMI?

Oof, what isn’t wrong with BMI?

In short, it was developed as a demographic-based tool to specifically chart the weight-related health of working-age European white men a little under 200 years ago.

This means that if you are, perchance, not a working-age European white man in 1830 or so, then it’s not so useful. It’d be like first establishing height norms based on NBA basketball players, and then applying it to the general population, and thus coming to the conclusion that someone who is 6’2″ is very short.

In long, we did a deep-dive into it here, and in particular what things go dangerously wrong when it’s applied to women, non-white people, athletic people, pregnant people, people under 16 or over 65 and more:

When BMI Doesn’t Quite Measure Up

What we usually recommend instead

For heart disease risk and diabetes risk both, waist circumference is a much more universally reliable indicator. And since those two things tend to affect a lot of other health risks, it becomes an excellent starting point for being aware of many aspects of health.

Pregnancy will still throw off waist circumference a little (measure below the bump, not around it!), but it will nevertheless be more helpful than BMI even then, as it becomes necessary to just increase the numbers a little, according to gestational month and any confounding factors e.g. twins, triplets, etc. Ask your obstetrician about this, as it’s beyond the scope of our article today!

As to what’s considered a risk:
  • Waist circumference of more than 35 inches for women
  • Waist circumference of more than 40 inches for men

These numbers are considered applicable across demographics of age, ethnicity, and lifestyle.

Source: Waist circumference as a vital sign in clinical practice: a Consensus Statement from the IAS and ICCR Working Group on Visceral Obesity

Bonus extra measurement based on the above

Important also is waist to hip ratio.

How to calculate it:

  1. measure your waist circumference
  2. measure your hip circumference
  3. divide the first measurement by the second one

Because it’s a ratio, it doesn’t matter what units you use (e.g. inches, cm, etc) so long as you use the same units for both measurements.

The World Health Organization offers the following chart:

Health riskWomenMen
Low0.80 or lower0.95 or lower
Moderate0.81–0.850.96–1.0
High0.86 or higher1.1 or higher

Source: Waist Circumference and Waist-Hip Ratio: Report of a WHO Expert Consultation

This is especially relevant for cardiovascular disease risk:

Waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio as predictors of cardiovascular events: meta-regression analysis of prospective studies

…and also holds true for all-cause mortality:

Waist-Hip-Ratio as a Predictor of All-Cause Mortality in High-Functioning Older Adults

An ancient contender that’s still more useful than BMI

Remember Archimedes? The (perhaps apocryphal) story of his “Eureka” moment in the bathtub when he realized that water displacement could be used to measure the volume of an irregular shape?

Just like Archimedes (who, the story goes, had been hired to determine the composition of a crown that might or might not have been pure gold), we can use this method to determine body composition, because we have references for how much a given volume of a given substance will weigh, so combing what we know about a body’s weight and volume will tell us about its composition in ways that neither metric could give us alone.

Indeed, it’s one of the commonly-mentioned flaws of BMI that muscle weighs more than fat, and Archimedes’ method not only avoids that problem, but also, actually turns that knowledge (muscle weighs more than fat) to our advantage.

It’s called “hydrostatic weighing” now:

Hydrostatic Weighing: Evaluation of body composition parameters using various diagnostic methods: A meta analysis study

You may be wondering: what about bones? Or internal organs?

The fact is that those are slightly confounding factors that do get in the way of a truly accurate analysis, but the variation in how much one person’s skeleton weighs vs another’s, or one person’s set of organs weigh than another’s, is too small to make an important difference to the health implications.

Lastly…

Hydrostatic weighing isn’t the only way to work out how much of our body is made of fat; if you have for example a smart scale at home (like this one) that tells you your body fat percentage, that is an estimate based on bioelectrical impedance analysis.

It’s less accurate than the hydrostatic method, but easier to do at home!

As to what percentages are “best”, healthy body fat percentages are (assuming normal hormones) generally considered to be in the range of 20–25% for women and 15–20% for men.

You can read more about this here:

Is A Visible Six-Pack Obtainable Regardless Of Genetic Predisposition?

Take care!

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  • You’ve Got Questions? We’ve Got Answers!

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    From Cucumbers To Kindles

    Q: Where do I get cucumber extract?

    A: You can buy it from BulkSupplements.com (who, despite their name, start at 100g packs)

    Alternatively: you want it as a topical ointment (for skin health) rather than as a dietary supplement (for bone and joint health), you can extract it yourself! No, it’s not “just juice cucumbers”, but it’s also not too tricky.

    Click Here For A Quick How-To Guide!

    Q: Tips for reading more and managing time for it?

    A: We talked about this a little bit in yesterday’s edition, so you may have seen that, but aside from that:

    • If you don’t already have one, consider getting a Kindle or similar e-reader. They’re very convenient, and also very light and ergonomicno more wrist strain as can occur with physical books. No more eye-strain, either!
    • Consider making reading a specific part of your daily routine. A chapter before bed can be a nice wind-down, for instance! What’s important is it’s a part of your day that’ll always, or at least almost always, allow you to do a little reading.
    • If you drive, walk, run, or similar each day, a lot of people find that’s a great time to listen to an audiobook. Please be safe, though!
    • If your lifestyle permits such, a “reading retreat” can be a wonderful vacation! Even if you only “retreat” to your bedroom, the point is that it’s a weekend (or more!) that you block off from all other commitments, and curl up with the book(s) of your choice.

    Q: Any study tips as we approach exam season? A lot of the productivity stuff is based on working life, but I can’t be the only student!

    A: We’ve got you covered:

    • Be passionate about your subject! We know of no greater study tip than that.
    • Find a willing person and lecture them on your subject. When one teaches, two learn!
    • Your mileage may vary depending on your subject, but, find a way of studying that’s fun to you!
    • If you can get past papers, get as many as you can, and use those as your “last minute” studying in the week before your exam(s). This will prime you for answering exam-style questions (and leverage state-dependent memory). As a bonus, it’ll also help ease any anxiety, because by the time of your exam it’ll be “same old, same old”!

    Q: Energy drinks for biohacking, yea or nay?

    A: This is definitely one of those “the dose makes the poison” things!

    But… The generally agreed safe dose of taurine is around 3g/day for most people; a standard Red Bull contains 1g.

    That math would be simple, but… if you eat meat (including poultry or fish), that can also contain 10–950mg per 100g. For example, tuna is at the high end of that scale, with a standard 12oz (340g) tin already containing up to 3.23g of taurine!

    And sweetened carbonated beverages in general have so many health issues that it’d take us a full article to cover them.

    Short version? Enjoy in moderation if you must, but there are definitely better ways of getting the benefits they may offer.

    Q: Best morning routine?

    A: The best morning routine is whatever makes you feel most ready to take on your day!

    This one’s going to vary a lot—one person’s morning run could be another person’s morning coffee and newspaper, for example.

    In a nutshell, though, ask yourself these questions:

    • How long does it take me to fully wake up in the morning, and what helps or hinders that?
    • When I get out of bed, what do I really need before I can take on my day?
    • If I could have the perfect morning, what would it look like?
    • What can evening me do, to look after morning me’s best interests? (Semi-prepare breakfast ready? Lay out clothes ready? Running shoes? To-Do list?)

    Q: I’m curious how much of these things you actually use yourselves, and are there any disagreements in the team? In a lot of places things can get pretty heated when it’s paleo vs vegan / health benefits of tea/coffee vs caffeine-abstainers / you need this much sleep vs rise and grinders, etc?

    A: We are indeed genuinely enthusiastic about health and productivity, and that definitely includes our own! We may or may not all do everything, but between us, we probably have it all covered. As for disagreements, we’ve not done a survey, but if you take an evidence-based approach, any conflict will tend to be minimized. Plus, sometimes you can have the best of both!

    • You could have a vegan paleo diet (you’d better love coconut if you do, though!
    • There is decaffeinated coffee and tea (your taste may vary)
    • You can get plenty of sleep and rise early (so long as an “early to bed, early to rise” schedule suits you!)

    Interesting note: humans are social creatures on an evolutionary level. Evolution has resulted in half of us being “night owls” and the other half “morning larks”, the better to keep each other safe while sleeping. Alas, modern life doesn’t always allow us to have the sleep schedule that’d suit each of us best individually!

    Have a question you’d like answered? Reply to this email, or use the feedback widget at the bottom! We always love to hear from you

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  • “Slugging” Skin Care Routine (Tips From A Dermatologist)

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    Dermatologist Dr. Jenny Liu weighs in with advice!

    Sometimes simplest is best

    Slugging is a skincare trend involving applying petrolatum (e.g. Vaseline) as the final step to lock in hydration and repair the skin barrier. It’s particularly useful for dry, sensitive, or eczema-prone skin, and/or damaged skin barriers from overuse of actives or harsh conditions.

    How it works: the waterproof layer reduces water loss (up to 99%) and facilitates repair the skin barrier. Thus, it indirectly hydrates the skin, supports natural exfoliation, and reduces fine lines. Best of all, it’s non-irritating, non-comedogenic, and safe for all skin types.

    How to do it:

    1. Cleanse thoroughly to remove makeup and impurities.
    2. Apply a moisturizer or serum with humectants (e.g. glycerin, hyaluronic acid).
    3. Seal with petrolatum (e.g. Vaseline or similar).
    4. Skip areas with stronger active ingredients (e.g. retinoids) and active acne areas.
    5. Apply 30–60 minutes before bed to reduce product transfer.
    6. Use a gentle cleanser in the morning to remove residue.

    For more on all of this, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Castor Oil: All-Purpose Life-Changer, Or Snake Oil? ← skincare is one of the things it definitely does work well for, and can be used for slugging also.

    Take care!

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  • Taurine: An Anti-Aging Powerhouse? Exploring Its Unexpected Benefits

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Dr. Mark Rosenberg explains:

    Not a stimulant, but…

    • Its presence in energy drinks often causes people to assume it’s a stimulant, but it’s not. In fact, it’s a GABA-agonist, thus having a calming effect.
    • The real reason it’s in energy drinks is because it helps increase mitochondrial ATP production (ATP = adenosine triphosphate = how cells store energy that’s ready to use; mitochondria take glucose and make ATP)
    • Taurine is also anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anticancer.
    • In the category of aging, human studies are slow to give results for obvious reasons, but mouse studies show that supplementing taurine in middle-aged mice increased their lifespan by 10–12%, as well as improving various physiological markers of aging.
    • Taking a closer look at aging—literally; looking at cellular aging—taurine reduces cellular senescence and protects telomeres, thus decreasing DNA mutations.

    For more on the science of these, plus Dr. Rosenberg’s personal experience, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

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  • Coughing/Wheezing After Dinner?
  • We’re the ‘allergy capital of the world’. But we don’t know why food allergies are so common in Australian children

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Australia has often been called the “allergy capital of the world”.

    An estimated one in ten Australian children develop a food allergy in their first 12 months of life. Research has previously suggested food allergies are more common in infants in Australia than infants living in Europe, the United States or Asia.

    So why are food allergies so common in Australia? We don’t know exactly – but local researchers are making progress in understanding childhood allergies all the time.

    Miljan Zivkovic/Shutterstock

    What causes food allergies?

    There are many different types of reactions to foods. When we refer to food allergies in this article, we’re talking about something called IgE-mediated food allergy. This type of allergy is caused by an immune response to a particular food.

    Reactions can occur within minutes of eating the food and may include swelling of the face, lips or eyes, “hives” or welts on the skin, and vomiting. Signs of a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) include difficulty breathing, swelling of the tongue, swelling in the throat, wheeze or persistent cough, difficulty talking or a hoarse voice, and persistent dizziness or collapse.

    Recent results from Australia’s large, long-running food allergy study, HealthNuts, show one in ten one-year-olds have a food allergy, while around six in 100 children have a food allergy at age ten.

    https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/skin-rashes-babies-concept-1228925236
    A food allergy can present with skin reactions. comzeal images/Shutterstock

    In Australia, the most common allergy-causing foods include eggs, peanuts, cow’s milk, shellfish (for example, prawn and lobster), fish, tree nuts (for example, walnuts and cashews), soybeans and wheat.

    Allergies to foods like eggs, peanuts and cow’s milk often present for the first time in infancy, while allergies to fish and shellfish may be more common later in life. While most children will outgrow their allergies to eggs and milk, allergy to peanuts is more likely to be lifelong.

    Findings from HealthNuts showed around three in ten children grew out of their peanut allergy by age six, compared to nine in ten children with an allergy to egg.

    Are food allergies becoming more common?

    Food allergies seem to have become more common in many countries around the world over recent decades. The exact timing of this increase is not clear, because in most countries food allergies were not well measured 40 or 50 years ago.

    We don’t know exactly why food allergies are so common in Australia, or why we’re seeing a rise around the world, despite extensive research.

    But possible reasons for rising allergies around the world include changes in the diets of mothers and infants and increasing sanitisation, leading to fewer infections as well as less exposure to “good” bacteria. In Australia, factors such as increasing vitamin D deficiency among infants and high levels of migration to the country could play a role.

    In several Australian studies, children born in Australia to parents who were born in Asia have higher rates of food allergies compared to non-Asian children. On the other hand, children who were born in Asia and later migrated to Australia appear to have a lower risk of nut allergies.

    Meanwhile, studies have shown that having pet dogs and siblings as a young child may reduce the risk of food allergies. This might be because having pet dogs and siblings increases contact with a range of bacteria and other organisms.

    This evidence suggests that both genetics and environment play a role in the development of food allergies.

    We also know that infants with eczema are more likely to develop a food allergy, and trials are underway to see whether this link can be broken.

    Can I do anything to prevent food allergies in my kids?

    One of the questions we are asked most often by parents is “can we do anything to prevent food allergies?”.

    We now know introducing peanuts and eggs from around six months of age makes it less likely that an infant will develop an allergy to these foods. The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy introduced guidelines recommending giving common allergy-causing foods including peanut and egg in the first year of life in 2016.

    Our research has shown this advice had excellent uptake and may have slowed the rise in food allergies in Australia. There was no increase in peanut allergies between 2007–11 to 2018–19.

    Introducing other common allergy-causing foods in the first year of life may also be helpful, although the evidence for this is not as strong compared with peanuts and eggs.

    A boy's hand holding some peanuts.
    Giving kids peanuts early can reduce the risk of a peanut allergy. Madame-Moustache/Shutterstock

    What next?

    Unfortunately, some infants will develop food allergies even when the relevant foods are introduced in the first year of life. Managing food allergies can be a significant burden for children and families.

    Several Australian trials are currently underway testing new strategies to prevent food allergies. A large trial, soon to be completed, is testing whether vitamin D supplements in infants reduce the risk of food allergies.

    Another trial is testing whether the amount of eggs and peanuts a mother eats during pregnancy and breastfeeding has an influence on whether or not her baby will develop food allergies.

    For most people with food allergies, avoidance of their known allergens remains the standard of care. Oral immunotherapy, which involves gradually increasing amounts of food allergen given under medical supervision, is beginning to be offered in some facilities around Australia. However, current oral immunotherapy methods have potential side effects (including allergic reactions), can involve high time commitment and cost, and don’t cure food allergies.

    There is hope on the horizon for new food allergy treatments. Multiple clinical trials are underway around Australia aiming to develop safer and more effective treatments for people with food allergies.

    Jennifer Koplin, Group Leader, Childhood Allergy & Epidemiology, The University of Queensland and Desalegn Markos Shifti, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Child Health Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • The Five Key Traits Of Healthy Aging

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    The Five Keys Of Aging Healthily

    Image courtesy of Peter Prato.

    This is Dr. Daniel Levitin. He’s a neuroscientist, and his research focuses on aging, the brain, health, productivity, and creativity. Also music, and he himself is an accomplished musician also, but we’re not going to be focusing on that today.

    We’re going to be looking at the traits that, according to science, promote healthy longevity in old age. In other words, the things that increase our healthspan, from the perspective of a cognitive scientist.

    What does he say we should do?

    Dr. Levitin offers us what he calls the “COACH” traits:

    1. Curiosity
    2. Openness
    3. Associations
    4. Conscientiousness
    5. Healthy practices

    By “associations”, he means relationships. However, that would have made the acronym “CORCH”, and decisions had to be made.

    Curiosity

    Leonardo da Vinci had a list of seven traits he considered most important.

    We’ll not go into those today (he is not our featured expert of the day!), but we will say that he agreed with Dr. Levitin on what goes at the top of the list: curiosity.

    • Without curiosity, we will tend not to learn things, and learning things is key to keeping good cognitive function in old age
    • Without curiosity, we will tend not to form hypotheses about how/why things are the way they are, so we will not exercise imagination, creativity, problem-solving, and other key functions of our brain
    • Without curiosity, we will tend not to seek out new experiences, and consequently, our stimuli will be limited—and thus, so will our brains

    Openness

    Being curious about taking up ballroom dancing will do little for you, if you are not also open to actually trying it. But, openness is not just a tag-on to curiosity; it deserves its spot in its own right too.

    Sometimes, ideas and opportunities come to us unbidden, and we have to be able to be open to those too. This doesn’t mean being naïve, but it does mean having at least a position of open-minded skepticism.

    Basically, Dr. Levitin is asking us to be the opposite of the pejorative stereotype of “an old person stuck in their ways”.

    Associations

    People are complex, and so they bring complexities to our lives. Hopefully, positively stimulating ones. Without them to challenge us (again, hopefully in a positive way), we can get very stuck in a narrow field of experience.

    And of course, having at least a few good friends has numerous benefits to health. There’s been a lot of research on this; 5 appears to be optimal.

    • More than that, and the depth tends to tail off, and/or stresses ensue from juggling too many relationships
    • Fewer than that, and we might be only a calendar clash away from loneliness

    Friends provide social stimulation and mutual support; they’re good for our mental health and even our physiological immunity (counterintuitively, by means of shared germs).

    And, a strong secure romantic relationship is something that has been found time and again to extend healthy life.

    Note: by popular statistics, this benefit is conferred upon men partnered with women, men partnered with men, women partnered with women, but not women partnered with men.

    There may be a causative factor that’s beyond the scope of this article which is about cognitive science, not feminism, but there could also be a mathematical explanation for this apparent odd-one-out:

    Since women tend to live longer than men (who are also often older than their female partners), women who live the longest are often not in a relationship—precisely because they are widows. So these long-lived widows will tend to skew the stats, through no fault of their husbands.

    On the flipside of this, for a woman to predecease her (statistically older and shorter-lived) husband will often require that she die quite early (perhaps due to accident or illness unrelated to age), which will again skew the stats to “women married to men die younger”, without anything nefarious going on.

    Conscientiousness

    People who score highly in the character trait “conscientiousness” will tend to live longer. The impact is so great, that a child’s scores will tend to dictate who dies in their 60s or their 80s, for example.

    What does conscientiousness mean? It’s a broad character trait that’s scored in psychometric tests, so it can be things that have a direct impact on health, such as brushing one’s teeth, or things that are merely correlated, such as checking one’s work for typos (this writer does her best!).

    In short, if you are the sort of person who attends to the paperwork for your taxes on time, you are probably also the sort of person who remembers to get your flu vaccination and cancer screening.

    Healthy practices

    This means “the usual things”, such as:

    Want to learn more?

    You can check out his book, which we reviewed all so recently, and you can also enjoy this video, in which he talks about matters concerning healthy aging from a neuroscientist’s perspective, ranging from heart health and neurodegeneration, to the myth of failing memory, to music and lifespan and more:

    !

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  • Kimchi Fried Rice

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    Fried rice is not something that leaps to many people’s minds when one says “health food”. But it can be! Today’s recipe is great for many aspects of health, but especially the gut, because of its star ingredient, the kimchi—as well as the fiber in the rest of the dish, which is mostly a variety of vegetables, as well as the rice, which we are assuming you got wholegrain. An optional egg per person adds more healthy fats too!

    You will need

    • Avocado oil, for frying. We picked avocado oil for its healthy fats profile, neutral taste, and high smoke point (we’ll be working at very high temperatures today that might make olive oil or coconut oil smoke). We also recommend against seed oils (e.g. sunflower or canola) for health reasons.
    • 1lb cooked and cooled rice—here’s our recipe for Tasty Versatile Rice if you don’t have leftovers you want to use
    • 7oz kimchi, roughly chopped
    • 4 spring onions, finely chopped
    • 4oz white cabbage, finely shredded
    • 3oz frozen peas, defrosted
    • 1 bulb garlic, thinly sliced
    • 1 carrot, grated
    • ½ red pepper, finely diced
    • 2 tbsp chili oil (or 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and 1 red chili, very finely chopped) ← don’t worry about the smoke point of this; it’s going to be for drizzling
    • 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
    • 2 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
    • Optional: 1 egg per person
    • Note: we didn’t forget to include salt; there’s simply enough already in the dish because of the kimchi and soy sauce.

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Lightly oil a wok (or similar) and crank up the heat as high as your stove can muster. Add the garlic and spring onions; keep them moving. When they’re turning golden, add the cabbage, carrot, and red pepper. Add them one by one, giving the wok a chance to get back to temperature each time before adding the next ingredient.

    2) When the vegetables are beginning to caramelize (if the temperature is good, this should only be a couple of minutes at most), add the rice, as well as the kimchi, peas, soy sauce, and black pepper. Toss everything ensure it’s all well-combined and evenly cooked. When it’s done (probably only another minute or two), take it off the heat.

    3) Optional: if you’re adding eggs, fry them now. Serve a bowl of kimchi-fried rice per person, adding 1 fried egg on top of each.

    4) Drizzle the chili oil as a colorful, tasty garnish that’s full of healthful polyphenols too.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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