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A comment on Overweight overtakes tobacco smoking as the leading disease risk factor in 2024. Parent comment

Re:Overweight overtakes tobacco smoking as the leading disea... by tptacek on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @02:54PM (#42392094)
It does for some applications, and not for others. In epidemiology you're looking at the number across broad populations, where a lot of the "three dimensions" idiosyncrasies cancel out. You're likely to run into trouble taking literal BMI constants and turning them into individualized patient care instructions, though.
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Re:Overweight overtakes tobacco smoking as the leading disea... by nottorp on Thursday December 12, 2024 @12:36AM (#42396515)
Or basically: there are outliers, and those tend to complain. But the average billions cancel them out statistically.

I'm an outlier myself, and so is anyone who did some serious sports for a significant amount of time. There are other reasons to be an outlier too. But they're not so statistically significant.

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Re:Overweight overtakes tobacco smoking as the leading disea... by xarope on Thursday December 12, 2024 @01:08AM (#42396662)
ditto. Always a bit frustrating when the sadly overweight nurse looks at my height and weight, charts it, and mutters to themselves "borderline". My last visit, at least the doctor deigned to actually eyeball me and said "you look like you are quite active, we can ignore this".
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Re:Overweight overtakes tobacco smoking as the leading disea... by nottorp on Thursday December 12, 2024 @11:15AM (#42400436)
Oh I'm inarguably overweight, but not to the point the BMI would indicate, considering that when i was younger and in top form i was between 29 and 30.
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Re:Overweight overtakes tobacco smoking as the leading disea... by worik on Thursday December 12, 2024 @01:33PM (#42401902)
You are saying it is a not dreadful statistical measure.

That is doubtful, but possible

It is used for individuals. That is where it is harmful

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Re:Overweight overtakes tobacco smoking as the leading disea... by swatcoder on Thursday December 12, 2024 @04:16PM (#42403419)
> harmful

It's hard to conceive of anyone meaningfully "harmed" by being a BMI outlier.

The only real occassion it comes up is when some lean and uncommonly athletic person gets miscategorized as obese and get warned of increased risks to their wellness if they don't lose weight. A warning which they generally laugh at because they know their own situation.

That's hardly "harm" -- "mild social nuisance" is more apt.

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Re:Overweight overtakes tobacco smoking as the leading disea... by worik on Thursday December 12, 2024 @04:50PM (#42403781)
> It's hard to conceive of anyone meaningfully "harmed" by being a BMI outlier.

"You are fat. You must diet."...."Oh my Dog!! I am fat!!! I will fast"

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Re:Overweight overtakes tobacco smoking as the leading disea... by hughesjj on Friday December 13, 2024 @06:16AM (#42407618)
Potentially for health insurance but I get the actuarial argument, especially since higher than typical weight regardless of fat composition puts higher than typical strain on your cardiovascular (and other) systems
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Re:Overweight overtakes tobacco smoking as the leading disea... by kelipso on Friday December 13, 2024 @12:10PM (#42410324)
The harm is that are more likely to get prescribed unnecessary medications. Most people are not confident enough or not knowledgeable enough to wave off what doctors say.
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