When It Comes to Health, Muscle Mass Matters
Muscle mass plays a huge role in predicting health outcomes and yet is rarely assessed in clinical practice.
Most doctors use BMI to assess health, which is overlooking a major vital sign — muscle mass.
For decades, our society has been using a person’s body mass index, commonly known as BMI, to determine a person’s health. Yet for many, this simple math equation — dividing a person’s weight by the square of their height — offers an incomplete picture of health because it doesn’t take important health factors like muscle mass into account. In fact, nearly 1 in 5 people have a misleading BMI, according to the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
BMI fails to account for differences in muscle mass
BMI first became popular in the 1970s as a way to assess the prevalence of obesity across large, diverse populations for tracking long term trends. It has since then become the go-to way to assess people’s health. Yet, BMI ignores major individual health factors like age, chronic conditions, and physical activity level.
Additionally, BMI is just based on body weight and does not differentiate between fat mass and muscle mass (also known as body composition). Having more…
