NHS remove the ‘sex’ discriminator from their bmi calculator

[Dragonasaurus]

Resulting in poorer information being provided to everyone who uses it. Is this really because of the feelings of 0.02% of the population, or is there another explanation?

Maybe someone who supports the trans argument can explain why it is better to provide poorer health information for everyone? Obesity is far more of an issue for the health service than the mental health of a tiny minority. Wouldn’t a warning have been enough?

The fact that the range is so wide is how they account for body composition

I'm calling bullshit. I have 32HH tits and a fairly slim body. If I had a B cup I would be mid range BMI. As it is, I am just in the overweight. So BMI is NOT the same for men and women as our fat is not necessarily visceral.

Here's NHS Scotland:

https://www.rightdecisions.scot.nhs.uk/my-pathway-to-a-healthy-weight-in-development/finding-my-pathway/why-are-we-asking-sex/

'Gender isn't a factor in adult BMI calculation formulas, but we ask about it because men and women have different typical body fat percentages and physiological needs, which can influence health outcomes even at the same BMI. '

I don't see why it should be different for different sexes? I guess women tend to have a higher body fat percentage? But men do seem to weigh more in general?

Like a woman of 5'6 who looked bang average would weigh less than a man of the same height who was also average looking size? Or maybe they wouldn't. I have the perception they would for some reason.

Women store fat differently, and have breasts, for starters.

Here's a wee nostalgic page of gendergobbledygook from 2021:

https://service-manual.nhs.uk/content/inclusive-content/sex-gender-and-sexuality

'Someone may see themselves as a man, a woman or neither (non-binary). Being non-binary can mean having no gender, a different gender, or being in between genders. Gender can be fixed or fluid. Some people identify with a gender opposite to the sex they were registered with.'

So once again, the male body is the default human and women are made invisible.

Ridiculous but also so anti-progressive and anti-scientific.

exactly
I would guess my breasts add a few kilos to my body weight
(hard to know how you could weight them though- I can imagine calculating the volume perhaps...)

Also, men tend to have more muscle mass and bigger heavier bones and organs. Bigger lungs, for example (see all the arguments for sex-segregated sports).

A man and a woman of the same height and age are likely to have quite different body composition. BMI is a crude measurement at the best of times.

Hmm I suspect we have a case of statistical bollocks going on here through Averaging.

It's the old - 'the average human has one and a bit legs' which would confuse an alien.

It now says that ethnicity is more important. But this could be an averaging issue rather than anything.

If you have Asian men and white women around the same mark it could skew the data on averaging.

Thus small women and tall men of all ethnicities would get particularly poor results if you removed sex from the data set.

What they should be doing is calculating on sex and ethnicity for greater accuracy. Instead they've said it doesn't matter as much, which is bullshit. It just means the range of different isn't as big and BMI is fairly crude.

Certainly being a below average height woman it makes a difference, on a measure that was already not great for a measure that's known to be poorer for below or above average people.

I don't understand why they'd make a tool known for being crude at both ends of the scale even worse for those same groups.

It's just reducing us to 'the average human' mentality which frankly most people don't understand. I've never understood the whole 'average woman portion' thing. It's completely bloody useless to the majority of people and arguably helps to mislead as many people as it helps.

As someone who is ultimately also worst affected by these averaging issues it's frustrating. We should be moving to greater individualisation not towards the dehumanisation of the average.

That was my understanding. The healthy range is broad, it's not aiming to give an ideal weight for individuals, it's saying that if you are between (say) 7.5 stone and 10 stone at a given height, you are unlikely to be either overweight or underweight enough to affect your health. It doesn't mean you mightn't be thinner or fatter than the weight at which you personally feel healthiest.

My reading of it is that it is somewhat useful at population level, and next to useless for individuals. Which begs the question why anyone suggests that individuals pay it any attention. And more pertinently, why the NHS uses it as a criteria for certain decisions.

Hard to believe there's no material difference, as the male body is prone to bigger muscles which are heavier by cubic inch volume than fat. Women carry more fat on breasts and hips.

It's a pretty basic tool anyway. Many athletes, especially rugby players, get classified as obese as they have such huge, dense muscles for their height, when they are actually fit and healthy.

For example, a woman's choice of where/how she can give birth can be affected by whether she's classed as 'overweight' according to the BMI measurement. Which disregards her sex, and also the effects of pregnancy on her body. It probably shouldn't come as a surprise to the NHS that pregnant women weigh more than they did when not pregnant.

Here's another:

Women seeking a breast reduction on the NHS may be disqualified based on their BMI, irregardless of whether the cause of that BMI measurement being 'overweight' may be the breasts they seek to reduce.

https://www.hweclinicalguidance.nhs.uk/clinical-policies/breast-reduction-surgery/

Example:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyg76rx1p1o

the change makes the tool more inclusive for transgender and non-binary people.

And makes it less inclusive to women.

Gosh, NHS, you are surprising!

For those wondering what large breasts may weight - from that article ' her breasts...add about two-and-a-half stone (16kg)'.

It's considerable.

I’ve just tried mine and now it doesn’t ask my BMI is 2 points better than before! All sounds good but nothing has changed!

I can’t see a feedback link though.

I honestly think the BMI's main value is that you can have a big chart on the wall in the GP or Nurse Practitioner office, and someone who is obviously a bit overweight can be shown 'look here is where you are, in the obese bit, it would be much better if we can get you down to overweight first, and then into the healthy range.'

It doesn't really matter that it breaks down for very athletic people, or that it isn't weighted for different sex or other things - it's just a handy way for HCP to tell someone in a semi-objective way that they are needing to lose weight and roughly how much to be aiming at.

I'm quite athletic so even at quite low body fat I'd be at the top of normal, and I'm nowhere near that. I don't really care about my BMI, but it's easy enough to see from my waist measurement or in the mirror that I'm a bit better insulated than I could be.

BMI is a truly outdated tool. I am 5ft 1 and 8st 9lb. I am a size 8 but according r
to BMI I am at the top end of healthy. It recommends that I should be a stone lighter! I look gaunt as it is!

That's weird because I'm a stone heavier than you at the same height, and I'm at the top end of healthy on the BMI calculator I use, and you would be bang in the middle of healthy! Do BMI calculators differ from one another?

Yes, I'm in the overweight category, by about 2 points.But I weight train (so a bit more muscle than is normal for a woman my age) & am very fit. My peak flow reading is way over the standard for an asthmatic woman my age.

I'd love to be 10 kilos lighter, but my practice nurse who does my annual check up says that BMI is not really particularly useful in my case.

I think this is the answer.

It's another one of those instances where population level statements does not really work when applied to individuals, and attempting to use it that way can be very misleading.

We can llok at an individual, their body in terms of weight, muscle mass, height, their body type, and many other things, and have a good idea where they stand in terms of health. There is zero reason to get BMI involved.

I suspect the main value is really for people like insurance agents, who won't look at you at all as an individual and are instead trying to make a prediction of how many people in a cohort might die young.

Waist-to-height ratio found to be a more accurate indicator of obesity risk in older adults than BMI
https://sheffield.ac.uk/news/waist-height-ratio-found-be-more-accurate-indicator-obesity-risk-older-adults-bmi

From the NHS BMI calc page:

'BMI is just one way to measure health. It cannot tell you if you're carrying too much fat, or if you've got lots of muscle.'

So what is it actually measuring, if it can't tell you if you're carrying too much fat?