3 ms·

BMI is itself fine for my line of questioning, because I'm curious as to whether excess quantities of fat impact cardiovascular risk in the general case. Determ

BMI is itself fine for my line of questioning, because I'm curious as to whether excess quantities of fat impact cardiovascular risk in the general case. Determining things like this is exactly the use case of BMI, since across large sample sizes it is a reasonable proxy for what we are really interested in (i.e. how much excess fat the participants have). Mainly: I'm curious mostly about whether excess body fat on its own impacts cardiovascular health, or whether it does so only indirectly by increasing the risk factors this calculator uses.

brandonb 12y ago
Obesity seems to impact long-term cardiovascular health only through the other numbers--i.e., raising your blood pressure and lipids. In the Framingham 30-year risk study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19506114 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19506114), they tried adding BMI to the risk model, but it didn't add any predictive value. But they used it to create a very approximate risk model for people who don't know their biomarkers. Also note that you can appear perfectly thin, but have high blood pressure and cholesterol, and thus be at risk! So know your numbers. A lot of health is only revealed by what's going on within your body.