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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stop Mom Never told You?

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Speaker 1: From housetop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Kristen, I'm Molly, so Molly. It's after the holidays.

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Speaker 1: We have gotten survived the holidays season, you do know,

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Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Day's coming up. I know, thank goodness,

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Speaker 1: another another holiday to look forward to. But it's around

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Speaker 1: the holidays that around this time, especially after the holidays,

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Speaker 1: with New Year's resolutions and everything, we start kind of

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Speaker 1: assessing our weight, our physical fitness, seeing what trouble spots

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Speaker 1: we might need to work on. Which brings to mind

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Speaker 1: a little measure called body mass index. Yeah, and it's

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Speaker 1: pretty easy to find out your own body mass index.

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Speaker 1: You go online, you google this, You'll be will enter

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Speaker 1: your weight and your height and find out a number

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Speaker 1: that's between eight and thirty five ish is. It's sort

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Speaker 1: of like that where the calculations kind of run and

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Speaker 1: if it falls within a certain range, then you're considered normal, overweight,

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Speaker 1: or obese. Yeah, and this seems like a pretty pretty

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Speaker 1: quick simple assessment of your weight, but there was some

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Speaker 1: controversy earlier this year about how one university was using

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Speaker 1: bm I to determine whether or not students could graduate. Right.

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Speaker 1: This was at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. It was the

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Speaker 1: in part of two thousand nine who probably heard about

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Speaker 1: this story. Uh, The school was requiring students with the

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Speaker 1: body mass index of thirty or above to take a

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Speaker 1: fitness course in order to graduate, and this raised a

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Speaker 1: lot of controversy about whether, you know, it's a school's

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Speaker 1: responsibility to tell a person that they might have a

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Speaker 1: health problem. Um. You know, students were saying that this

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Speaker 1: shouldn't be a requirement to graduate, that their academic records

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Speaker 1: should be UM. But one of the factors that always

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Speaker 1: comes up, I think when b m I is involved

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Speaker 1: is that it's not the most accurate thing. Now to

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Speaker 1: make sure that they are really getting students who they

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Speaker 1: considered obese, the school went on to measure the students waste,

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Speaker 1: hoping that that would weed out people like athletes who

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Speaker 1: have um higher weights but are still healthy for their heights. Right,

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Speaker 1: because people with really high b m I s and

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Speaker 1: the overweight and obese category might be at a higher

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Speaker 1: risk for things like heart disease and type two diabetes.

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Speaker 1: So the college was arguing that, hey, we're trying to,

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Speaker 1: you know, do this for our students better health in

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Speaker 1: the future. UM. But we recently found out that because

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Speaker 1: there is so much hubbub surrounding this issue, to school

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Speaker 1: just basically dropped it. But the issue of whether or

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Speaker 1: not b m I is actually a good predictor of

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Speaker 1: health is still pretty controversial. So let's talk about it.

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Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about all the ways we

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Speaker 1: can measure obesity, Kristen, Yeah, let's talk about like what

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Speaker 1: exactly the b m I formula is and go from there.

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Speaker 1: So the b m I, your b m I is

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Speaker 1: your weight divided by your height squared times seven and three. Now, wait,

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Speaker 1: that all depends on whether you're doing metric system right

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Speaker 1: or just standard. Yeah, this is this is just I

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Speaker 1: hate metric. Yeah, this is this is you know for

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Speaker 1: people in the in the US of A UM hate metric,

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Speaker 1: like Molly anti metric, Molly new nickname. Um, that's the

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Speaker 1: that's the formula. And there there's another formula for the

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Speaker 1: metric system, which I think it's actually easier. I don't

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Speaker 1: think you have to do anything with seven. Oh, three

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Speaker 1: probably is metric is far easier and makes a lot

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Speaker 1: more sense. However, that is the so that's to be

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Speaker 1: in my formula. But like you said, there are a

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Speaker 1: few other, even more reliable ways to assess your your

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Speaker 1: body fat content. Now we just mentioned that Lincoln would

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Speaker 1: measure a student's waste and this is known as the

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Speaker 1: waiste to hip ratio, which is getting a lot of

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Speaker 1: attention lately as a hip ha ha ha new way

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Speaker 1: to measure ob cit. What you do here is you

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Speaker 1: take a tape measure and you you measure your waist

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Speaker 1: at its smallest point and your hips at their largest point.

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Speaker 1: Divide them and you should get a ratio. And they

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Speaker 1: don't know yet what the perfectly healthy ratio is, but

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Speaker 1: they're saying that if you're a female, if the ratio

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Speaker 1: is less than one, then generally you're you're okay. So

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Speaker 1: we've got we've got b m I, we've got waste

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Speaker 1: of hip ratio. We also have the old pinch test. Okay.

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Speaker 1: That's basically where you take the some calipers to measure

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Speaker 1: the folds of skin in certain spots in your body.

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Speaker 1: This is not a fun test to take. Molly and

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Speaker 1: I can speak from experience, I had to take a

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Speaker 1: pinch test, uh in I believe it was eleventh grade

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Speaker 1: in health class in high school, and uh traumatized you

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Speaker 1: sound It wasn't traumatizing to me. The idea of you know,

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Speaker 1: going to gym class and having your fat pinch was

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Speaker 1: not a good idea of to you know, for sixteen

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Speaker 1: and seventeen year old girls. But that it's another way

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Speaker 1: to do it. But it's not very accurate. That's the

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Speaker 1: thing is, if it's just some gym teacher who's borrowing

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Speaker 1: the calipers from the health department, you can get a

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Speaker 1: vastly incorrect reading. Uh we're reading in US Musical Report

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Speaker 1: that let's say you've got body fat um or that's

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Speaker 1: what the caliper shaw that you have. That could be

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Speaker 1: anywhere from two to twenty eight. You know, just a

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Speaker 1: big margin of error if you're not using the pinchers

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Speaker 1: exactly right. So something that's a little bit more accurate

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Speaker 1: according to US mus Normal Report is something called the

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Speaker 1: bioelectrical test. And this is where a technician will attach

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Speaker 1: electrodes to one hand and one foot and they run

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Speaker 1: a harmless specify harmless radio frequency pulse through your body

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Speaker 1: to measure its water content. I mean space age space age,

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Speaker 1: but again it's not doesn't I guess no way of

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Speaker 1: measuring body fat is going to be tons of fun.

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Speaker 1: But I can't imagine having radio frequency running through me

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Speaker 1: would be good. Um, but this isn't a lot of

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Speaker 1: health clubs, medicine clinics. It's not very it's not very available.

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Speaker 1: Let's say to the general pulp like, also not very available.

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Speaker 1: It's something called the bod pod. This is my favorite

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Speaker 1: one I would love. It's an egg shaped chamber and

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Speaker 1: you climb in, you sit there for twenty seconds, and

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Speaker 1: it can measure air displacement and tell you exactly how

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Speaker 1: much body fat you have. So bod pods pretty spot

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Speaker 1: on with this seems like so far it's sort of

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Speaker 1: the golden standard. And as most things that are the

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Speaker 1: golden standard are, it's very expensive and so it's only

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Speaker 1: a few hospitals. It's really not available to the general public,

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Speaker 1: which is why the general public is still left finding

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Speaker 1: a body mass index calculator online and using that to

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Speaker 1: figure out how much body fat they have. Now for

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Speaker 1: the last test, Smalley, the immersion test. This one seems

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Speaker 1: like the most pleasant one. To do, because you basically

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Speaker 1: just get in a pool of water and get dunked

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Speaker 1: a few times. Uh. First you will expel all the

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Speaker 1: air from your lungs and uh and they dunk you

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Speaker 1: in a pool half a dozen times. And it says

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Speaker 1: that under or overestimates your body fat by only one

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Speaker 1: percentage points. So still pretty accurate. Yeah, is, but you

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Speaker 1: know that's just the recipe for the worst day ever

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Speaker 1: to me jump to make a jump in a pool

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Speaker 1: for an hour and then here how much body fat

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Speaker 1: I have? Like, if that's not a recipe for overreading

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Speaker 1: ice cream, I don't know what it is. But if

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Speaker 1: you've had any of those tests, I want to hear

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Speaker 1: about them, if you've been in a body pod, I

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Speaker 1: want to know how cool it is. But here's my

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Speaker 1: question to Molly. We have all of these other ways

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Speaker 1: to assess body fat that are much that are very accurate,

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Speaker 1: that are far more accurate. But Molly, my question is,

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Speaker 1: we have all of these different options for measuring body

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Speaker 1: fat and a lot of which have far more accurate results. However,

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Speaker 1: b m I is still our go to measure, right,

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Speaker 1: That's what they're using at Lincoln. When you ever you

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Speaker 1: read articles about health risk, heart disease, things like that.

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Speaker 1: People are always going to say, look your b m I,

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Speaker 1: But why why are we looking at bm I? Well, Molly,

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Speaker 1: should we go back in time? Perhaps it's my favorite

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Speaker 1: thing to do on this podcast, tell the story of

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Speaker 1: the body mass index, which is actually a little more

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Speaker 1: it's more interesting than than this probably sounds at this

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Speaker 1: point listeners. So because there's someone involved named Adolph wheat

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Speaker 1: Lit Wheatlet, and he's from Belgium, and all good stories

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Speaker 1: start in Belgium. So he's the one who came up

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Speaker 1: with this equation eighteen thirty two, not because he had

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Speaker 1: this overwhelming desire to study obesity, but because he was

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Speaker 1: doing this study on normal man. That means he was

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Speaker 1: looking at everything about man that was average to figure

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Speaker 1: out just what the most perfectly average man would look like,

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Speaker 1: from his arm length to his level length, to his obesity.

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Speaker 1: And I think that we should know that we got

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Speaker 1: all of this great information from an article on slate.

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Speaker 1: So Queetlet went around collecting all of his data from

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Speaker 1: several hundred countrymen, and he found that there were correlations

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Speaker 1: between a man's weight and height. Basically that your weight

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Speaker 1: is going to be proportional to your heights. Say, you know,

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Speaker 1: if I'm uh ten taller than you, I'm probably gonna

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Speaker 1: wait ten percent more than you as well. So if

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Speaker 1: he makes this pretty decent finding, but it's not like

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Speaker 1: Dr Stitch bonded immediately to say, oh quite like you've

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Speaker 1: discovered how to measure this, it kind of sits dormant

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Speaker 1: for a while. Yeah, because but back then, doctors weren't

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Speaker 1: really linking illness to obesity. Um, the first large scale

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Speaker 1: studies of obesity and health didn't start until early in

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century with the rise of insurance companies. I

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Speaker 1: find this really interesting because in all this talk of

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Speaker 1: healthcare form, you know, I mean, you kind of wonder

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Speaker 1: if we could save a lot of healthcare costs by

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Speaker 1: coming out and telling people, hey, you're unhealthy, you need

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Speaker 1: to change your habits, which is what Lincoln was trying

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Speaker 1: to do the school. So just better than in mind

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Speaker 1: when you think about what organization's role is and telling

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Speaker 1: people that they're unhealthy. But here's what the insurance companies do.

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Speaker 1: They want to show their policy holders that yes, you

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Speaker 1: were costing us more if you're overweight. Because you overweight

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Speaker 1: people are dying earlier than those of a so called

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Speaker 1: ideal weights. You're more likely to get diabetes, you more

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Speaker 1: likely get heart disease, and we're paying out the nose

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Speaker 1: for that. So what these insurance companies need basically is

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Speaker 1: a quick function to show how body fat is related

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Speaker 1: to your heightened weight. Yeah, and they still and back

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Speaker 1: then they had like the caliper skin fold testing UM

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Speaker 1: and hydrostatic weighing with the basically the immersion tests that

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Speaker 1: that we mentioned. But it wasn't until nineteen seventy two

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Speaker 1: that the physiology professor an obesity researcher named Ansel Keys

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Speaker 1: published the Landmark Indices of Relative Weight and Obesity which

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Speaker 1: he studied seventy men in five different countries to assess

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Speaker 1: different heightened weight formulas that correlated to the best measurement

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Speaker 1: of their body fat percentage. And with this study he

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Speaker 1: found that Quainlets formula was the best. It was the best,

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Speaker 1: but he noted that it was the best at population

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Speaker 1: studies is a good way for doctors to get an

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Speaker 1: idea of how a certain population was um overweight or

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Speaker 1: not overweight. It was never meant to be used on

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Speaker 1: an individual diagnosis scale, right and and Keys was the

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Speaker 1: one who renamed Quitla's formula the body mass index, and

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Speaker 1: then five the National Institutes i FELL started defining obesity

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Speaker 1: according to b m I. And what I thought was

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Speaker 1: really interesting in this late articles. When the n i

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Speaker 1: H first started using body mass index to define obesity,

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Speaker 1: it was very specific in terms of gender and that

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Speaker 1: you could have UM b m I measure for a

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Speaker 1: woman and a man, and the numbers were different. They

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Speaker 1: were kind of um odd numbers, like twenty seven point

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Speaker 1: eight was a cut off for ABC. Wharas now everything

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Speaker 1: sort of on the five. That's how they determine if

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Speaker 1: you're overweight or not. UM. But then they just wanted

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Speaker 1: to sort of sound like standardize everything, and that means

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Speaker 1: that both men and women's b m I was measured

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Speaker 1: the same way, despite the fact that women have a

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Speaker 1: lot of more body fat and UM. Like I said,

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Speaker 1: everything became on the five, so it was easy to member.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you knew as soon as you

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Speaker 1: hit thirty on your b m I that that was

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Speaker 1: a bad thing. So not only do we have this

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Speaker 1: measure that was originally intended for population studies rather than

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Speaker 1: individual diagnoses, we also have the NIH coming in and

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Speaker 1: sort of further watering down those standards. So we were

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Speaker 1: starting to see how the b M I might be

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Speaker 1: might not be the best predictor of your health because,

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Speaker 1: like you said, just to throw out a couple of things,

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Speaker 1: like b M I is the same for gender race.

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Speaker 1: There are some differences for children and teens, but for

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Speaker 1: the adult population, a b M I is a b

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Speaker 1: m I s bm I. It doesn't differ for men

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Speaker 1: and women. However, like you said, women have tend to

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Speaker 1: have more body fat than men, and at the same

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Speaker 1: b m I, older people will tend to have more

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Speaker 1: body fat than younger adults, which makes sense the mass exactly.

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Speaker 1: And then speaking of muscle mass, highly trained athletes who

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Speaker 1: are very muscular will probably have a very high b

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Speaker 1: m I that might put them in an overweight category

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Speaker 1: because it's just looking at body mass rather than differentiating

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Speaker 1: between fat and muscle. Right, So, you can find many

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Speaker 1: articles on the internet that just uh to cry down

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Speaker 1: with the b m I. It's not very accurate. Please

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Speaker 1: don't go on the internet and decide if your overweight

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Speaker 1: just based on a b m I. UM. A really

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Speaker 1: good example of how this can work against you was

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Speaker 1: a New York Times article from two thousand seven that

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Speaker 1: Kristen bound. It's called how does your waistline matter? Let

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Speaker 1: us count the ways ha ha ha um. And this

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Speaker 1: woman had a perfectly normal b m I. She didn't

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Speaker 1: have many risk factors for heart disease. But then her

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Speaker 1: doctor whips out a tape measure and does the old

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Speaker 1: ways to hit rate she and finds out that she

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Speaker 1: is actually in a high risk category for developing some

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Speaker 1: of these long term health problems. Now, while that New

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Speaker 1: York Times article highlights a couple of individual stories, I

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Speaker 1: think we should also know that there have been a

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Speaker 1: few large scale studies that have called the b m

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Speaker 1: I into question. For instance, there's on from a recent

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Speaker 1: one from the National Institutes of Health that compared people's

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Speaker 1: b m I s against results from the biolectrical analysis

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Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier, and it found, um for instance,

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Speaker 1: a big gender gap in these measurements, where where with men,

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Speaker 1: the b m I had a better correlation with their

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Speaker 1: with their lean mass, while in women the BF or

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Speaker 1: the bioelectrical test was a little more accurate predictor. And

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Speaker 1: they basically concluded that the b m I is is

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Speaker 1: pretty limited in how well it assesses obesity, and in

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Speaker 1: this case it missed more than half the people with

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Speaker 1: excess fat. And in addition, the Slate article also mentioned

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Speaker 1: a critique that was published in the journal Circulation that

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Speaker 1: said that since b m I is used in so

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Speaker 1: many of these large scale just health studies that we

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Speaker 1: that we see, and since b m I might also

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Speaker 1: not be very accurate, we don't know how the that's

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Speaker 1: affecting all of this health research that's going on. So

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Speaker 1: this could have a ripple effect in two areas beyond

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Speaker 1: just obesity. So basically, you can't trust your b m

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Speaker 1: I if it, I mean, it may not be showing

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Speaker 1: that you are overweight, and may be showing that you

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Speaker 1: are overweight and you're actually not. But it doesn't seem

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Speaker 1: to be going anywhere just because, as we said, it's

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Speaker 1: so easy. Anyone can check their b m I. So

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Speaker 1: um right now the big guidelines, even though the n

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Speaker 1: i H just found it's not the most accurate thing.

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Speaker 1: It through its National Heart, Long and Blood Institute, has

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Speaker 1: sort of tried to bring the waste hip ratio more

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Speaker 1: into a three legged stool, if you will, the three

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Speaker 1: legged stool of assessing your risk for these long term

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Speaker 1: health conditions to try and figure out if you are

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Speaker 1: overweight is the b M I plus the waist circumference thing.

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Speaker 1: And then also just evaluing your risk factors. Do you

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Speaker 1: have things like high blood pressure, how's your cholesterol account,

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Speaker 1: how's your blood glu close? Do you have a family

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Speaker 1: history of this? Do you smoke? Do you exercise? So

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Speaker 1: hopefully we'll be coming to a more well rounded view

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Speaker 1: of how we can measure obesity in the future, particularly

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Speaker 1: at schools like Lincoln are going to try and dictate

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Speaker 1: graduation based on it. And it all goes back to Wheatlet.

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Speaker 1: So thanks Wheetlet for all your hard work, but unfortunately

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Speaker 1: Mr Queatlet, we have manipulated and misused your tool. But

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Speaker 1: maybe we're on the right path now. Maybe maybe maybe

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Speaker 1: that should be our health resolution for two thousand and

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Speaker 1: en to find a bod pode that's mine. So if

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Speaker 1: any of you fair listeners out there have access to

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Speaker 1: a bod pod, you should definitely email us at Mom's

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Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com and make Molly

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Speaker 1: Edmonds is year. I don't know if it would make

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Speaker 1: my ear well, maybe a week of it. A day, yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: a day make Molly stay with a bod pod And

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Speaker 1: speaking of listener mail, why don't we uh whant we

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Speaker 1: do some of that? Okay? So today christ we I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna read some emails about the women behind Santa Clause,

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Speaker 1: that podcast we did right before Christmas. And first off,

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Speaker 1: we need to thank many of the listeners. I'm not

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Speaker 1: going to identify any of them by name, because a

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Speaker 1: lot of people caught us on this one. Um, we

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Speaker 1: made fun of the Goody Santa Claus Catherine Lee Bates

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Speaker 1: article and uh, it sent me back to eleventh grade

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Speaker 1: English as soon as our listeners started writing in. But

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Speaker 1: goody is an abbreviation of the title goodwife. So back

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Speaker 1: in those days, I would have gone over to have

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Speaker 1: been like, Goody, conger, have you any cookies for me?

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Speaker 1: Today I would have said no, go home. Then we

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Speaker 1: would have burned you as a witch. Um. So yes,

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Speaker 1: thanks to all listeners who reminded us of that. And

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Speaker 1: now I think we're going to share some theories from

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Speaker 1: our listeners about what Mrs Claus's first name is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: George wrote in, and he pointed out that in the

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Speaker 1: autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff gwen Her name is Layla. Alright,

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Speaker 1: laws Heather wrote in and said that if you saw

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy special Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,

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Speaker 1: then in that show, it's a girl named Jessica who

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Speaker 1: saves Chris Kringel, a young, handsome red hair Santa from

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Speaker 1: burger Meister Meister. Burger Burger Meister is mean and cool

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Speaker 1: and does not let children have toys. Chris, who has

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Speaker 1: a human raised by Elves, gives toys to all the

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Speaker 1: kids and yes, a doll to Jessica. They fall in love,

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Speaker 1: flee the town, get married, and grew old and happy

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Speaker 1: and fat together. Chris learns his real name is Claus

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Speaker 1: and becomes Santa Claus. So that makes Mrs Claus Jessica Claus,

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Speaker 1: Jessica Claus. We've got Layla Jessica and this one for

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Speaker 1: Virginia will round out are a trio of name names,

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Speaker 1: and it is my favorite. I thought this was the

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Speaker 1: cutest story. We got started to other other suggestions. This

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Speaker 1: one just Jase Cake. So basically, Virginia was hanging out

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Speaker 1: around Christmas with her boyfriend and his ten year old

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Speaker 1: daughter at the time, and his daughter asked her what

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Speaker 1: Mrs Claus's first name was and she said, I didn't

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Speaker 1: want to tell her that no one had ever thought

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Speaker 1: to give Mrs Claus her own name, so I told

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Speaker 1: her that Mrs Clause was Merry Christmas, and she decided

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Speaker 1: to change her name when she married Santa. I also

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Speaker 1: told her that I guess she couldn't have hyphenated her

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Speaker 1: name to marry Christmas Clause, but Santa and she had

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Speaker 1: been married so long that people really didn't hyphenate names

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Speaker 1: back then anyway, So I thought that was pretty durable.

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Speaker 1: And if you guys have any emails you would like

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Speaker 1: to send our way with your thoughts, feelings, and comments,

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Speaker 1: send them on to mom stuff at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. And of course, during the week, you can

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Speaker 1: follow us on our blog It's how to stuff, and

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Speaker 1: you can learn more about obesity and health and the

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Speaker 1: right way to assess your weight. How stuff works dot

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Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

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Speaker 1: Because at how stuff works dot com. Want more how

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Speaker 1: stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com home page. Brought to you by the

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Speaker 1: reinvented tooth thousand, twelve Camry. It's ready, are you