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when you record someone's BMI and it gets thrown in a spreadsheet as patient 123456 has BMI 23.5 the doctor is no longer looking at the patient. perhaps it's good enough, i don't claim to be able to evaluate the methodology of the study (and perhaps using BMI simply results in more skeptical results, by leaving healthy people out of the low risk group, which I'm fine with - not sure this is true though). it really was an incidental note on my part, but i stand by it. i am a little surprised at how much we're talking about it, i guess it is bikeshedding, which is understandable, im not qualified to comment with authority on much of the material myself :)



See this reply downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12041053

The parent was saying BMI is not a good diagnostic tool for individuals, and it was good for populations.

You're not addressing that point. You're saying that populations don't consider people individually. Which is true.

But you haven't made an argument against the use of population wide BMI, which is the only case it's generally accepted as being valid for.

(I agree it's over recommended as a individual measure, or overrecommended without caveats. E.g. BMI + waistline, or BMI + strength test.)


They also record your blood-pressure measurements on the chart. If you've got a mildly high BMI and fine blood-pressure, they know you're actually ok.




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