Recently I did a BMI check and it showed I was mildly OBESE??? Now before I totally lose my shit, let's go back to what BMI is. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), BMI was created, "In 1972, physiologist Ancel Keys (1904-2004) built upon the work of Adolphe Quetelet's Quetelet Index. He officially coined the modern term “body mass index” and provided evidence to support its current usage with his 1972 study [3], in which he analyzed 12 samples of 7,426 "healthy" men" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10693914/#:~:text=In%201972%2C%20physiologist%20Ancel%20Keys,of%207%2C426%20%22healthy%22%20men.). MEN! Not women.

Now in 2024, the medical community is realizing BMI really isn't a good judge on how healthy a man or woman is. In a recent posting by the Harvard School of Public Health, they stated, "BMI is a poor metric on people's health. It's not just Harvard saying this. Many different peer-reviewed medical journals are saying this. The funny thing is, the medical community still uses it! Why? The simple reason is because the news doesn't trickle down to doctors in the field unless they're looking for it. So I printed them out the last time I went to the doctor. Now I love my functional medicine doctor. He's really been great. But he is a busy guy and doesn't keep up with the latest things (and he admits it too). So I showed him all the new research and he was shocked! He told me they still teach BMI in medical school even though they are changing how the game is played.

How can you get past all this with your doctor? Simple. Print out the research which you can find pretty easily on Google. Yale, Harvard, NIH, etc. all have their research posted that you can print out. Even when I knew (I KNEW) I had Lipedema, I had to go in armed and prepared. That's when the doctor sits up and listens. They don't like being schooled but occasionally that needs to happen.