For years, the body mass index (BMI) has been the health metric millions of us have been fixated on when it comes to determining health status.
But now experts say we should focus on the body roundness index (BRI), which gives us a better indicator of the fat we should be most concerned about: the fat around our vital organs.
BMI is a simple calculation that uses your height and weight to tell you if you are too big for your height.
BRI, on the other hand, is more complex and uses a detailed multi-step formula to compare your height to their waist circumference.
But now MailOnline has created a simple tool that does the hard math for you, delivering a BRI result between zero and 20 based on your height and waist circumference.
According to studies that have verified the measure, a ‘healthy’ result is between 0.3 and three. However, if you get this result, it suggests that you are in the minority.
According to national averages, most adult Britons have a BRI of 3.8, which puts us as a nation in the unhealthy category.
Although BMI has been used for years, it has its shortcomings. For example, it can’t distinguish between muscle and fat in people’s weight, meaning it bizarrely calculates that chiseled wrestler-come-actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is technically obese.
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Instead, some experts say you should look at your “body roundness index.”
Even the NHS now advises people using their BMI calculator to also look at the shape of their waist.
“It is advisable to measure your waist to find out whether you have too much fat around your stomach,” the health service advises.
The potential importance of a healthy BRI, which was only coined as a term about a decade ago, is supported by research.
Chinese research this year found that people with higher BRIs had up to a 163 percent increased risk of heart disease compared to people with slimmer waists.
Professor Brendon Noble, an expert in regenerative medicine and life sciences at Westminster University, said BRI is a potential indicator of toxic fat clumping around vital organs in the abdomen, which research shows is strongly linked to a host of health problems .
These include heart disease, cancer and premature death.
“Many studies suggest that the more body fat you have, the more susceptible you are to this,” he said The Telegraph.
Some experts prefer BRI over BMI because it focuses on the most concerning type of fat: visceral fat.
According to the BMI system, a score of 18.5 to 25 is healthy. A score of 25 to 29 counts as overweight, and 30-plus means someone is obese, the stage at which the risk of disease increases dramatically
Hollywood hunk or hulk? Muscular celebrities like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Vin Diesel and Arnold Schwarzenegger are considered obese according to the Body Mass Index formula widely used by health authorities around the world. Some scientists now argue that it needs to be replaced. Mr. Schwarzenegger’s numbers come from his “peak” as a bodybuilder
Also called ‘skinny fat’ because people with an overweight BMI can have too much, visceral fat packs around our internal organs.
Although BRI doesn’t measure visceral fat as accurately as a scan would, it acts as an inexpensive indicator that people may need to improve their diet or exercise more.
Professor Noble said: ‘We still have a lot to learn about fat and how it can affect our health… but visceral fat appears to be more dangerous than subcutaneous fat, based on the research.’
Experts have previously criticized BMI as a measure of health.
Created by a Belgian mathematician in the 1830s, doctors have relied on BMI for almost two centuries.
One downside is that it cannot distinguish between fat distribution and muscle mass.
This means that a fit rugby player and a couch potato of exactly the same height and weight share the same scores – even if the former has a ripped physique and the other has a spare tire.
It is well known that obesity increases the risk of serious health problems that can damage the heart, such as high blood pressure, and cancer.
According to Cancer Research UK, being overweight is estimated to cause one in 20 cases of cancer in the UK.
Britain’s obesity crisis is also estimated to cost the country almost £100 billion a year.
This colossal figure includes both the health damage to the NHS and secondary economic impacts such as lost income as people take time off work due to illness and premature deaths.