Body Volume Index

All depends on how egg headed one wants to be. Some in academia push it to an extreme.

I'll reply at the top so you everyone can get a chance to view the fore mentioned news bit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11520859

Body mass index is defined as the individual's body weight divided by the square of his or her height. Immersing any body or thing in water and measuring the resulting change in volume is just that, volume. Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead? I think you're mixing up your apples and oranges, although I like them both.

True, the water displacement measures volume - this is what the new machine was doing

Weight and volume to get a density seems a more accurate way of determining how much fat someone has than with just weight and height (sort of a quasi-density).

One (BMI) uses only your height and weight. Everyone knows their height and most have a bathroom scale. Cost is zero. Approximate results which for most are OK.

The other requires a new scanner at significant cost to provide a more accurate(?) measurement. Meaningless to probably 99% of the population. With all the concern about medical costs the last thing we need is another machine to provide information of dubious usefulness.

I like the old BMI thingy.

What the hospital guy was saying is that BMI is fairly useless because it does not distinguish between fat and muscle and using only BMI would put most atheletes into the obese class when they obviously aren't. His machine could distinguish between fat and muscle and determine the volume of fat that was excess.

I understand that - but at the cost?

Not to mention - who cares?

Essentially "Body Mass Index" isn't the right obesity measurement to use going forward in this day and age, it simply doesn't work. Where as "Body Volume Index" does. BVI offers a brand new way of measuring the abdominal area, which BMI simply cannot do.

BVI is specifically designed to calculate risk factors associated with a person's body shape and type, through analysis of weight and body fat distribution. Therefore, if BVI was intergrated into the NHS, this would save millions of pounds, also the NHS would be able to make a return on the investment by selling BVI 3D scanners. Have a look at this site and view the presentation from the home page - www.bodyvolume.com

OK - For 98% of the population fat is fat - so for the remaining 2% we (the general public) are supposed to support and pay for a machine and services to tell whether a person is fat or not?

Thanks but no thanks! This kind of silly shyt is what drives up medical costs to such high levels.

I guess what I was saying is that the BMI is less accurate than a dunking and a weighing. This new scanning thing can do the same thing (determine the volume), but for the cost, why? I'm with you on that one.

All of this is a poor indicator of someones health as to being over weigh. Even the BMI is not of much true use with out total examination of the patient. Each and everyone of is different in body make up. Bone structure differs. Muscle weighs more then fat. To take a measure of weigh and height and do some calculations with sounds like poor medicine to me.

Unless this new machine can view into the body and differentiate the parts of the body to make effective mass determinations its a waste of money.

Surely all you have to do is immerse the body in water and measure the change in depth to calculate the true mass, no need for high tech machine?

... and blow out as much of the air in your lung(s) as you can ... out of your mouth (or tracheostomy). Incontinent ... vomiting ... cholostomy ... open wounds ... aquaphobia ... dysphagia ... CVA ... COPD ... you know - stuff people go to hospitals for ...

Risk.

A fair set of eyes and a pinch here and there should be all that your doctors needs.

But what about the patient? The new device could be valuable as an ongoing tool to motivate obese bariatric patients. That is where I see its use.

Don't dismiss it just because it doesn't work for you.

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As far as the BMI goes ... the calculation is flawed because it uses the square of the height. We are, after all, 3 dimensional ... the formula should consider the cubed height. The square of height says that no matter how tall you are, your width (or AP -depth) would have to be the same as someone shorter. That's absurd.

Empirically, taller people tend to be thinner in proportion to the height. But that should not be taken into consideration in the formula. That amounts to a penalty, given that many insurance companies use BMI to rate premiums.

I ignore BMI for my build, because the BMI is dependent only upon weight and height, it makes assumptions about muscle and bone mass, and overestimates fat on people with more lean body mass. Yet it underestimates fat on people like the elderly and those who don't get off their ass enough.

Perhaps a better 'quick' formula would be:

weight/(height² + 2xheight).

... which still makes me over-weight at 6'1" & 210lbs. BLAH!

... which still makes me over-weight at 6'1" & 210lbs. BLAH!

At that height & weight you are a bit on the chubby side!

At 65 years and 6' 2'' I try to stay between 170 and 175.

At that height and weight, he might be a body builder that is very lean. At that height and weight, you, sir, are a beanpole!!!

Not at all - perfectly fit - run and exercise every day.

If someone has additional weight due to physical conditioning they should say so - unless it is secret.

My point was that a blanket statement that someone is on the chubby side at 6'1" and 210 pounds has made some assumptions that could be absolutely incorrect. Maybe they should say so, but maybe you should not assume.

If claiming something out of the norm then the explanation is on the poster. İt is perfectly reasonable to assume standard conditions if no qualifying statement is made.

The size given is out of the norm though for a physical fitness type perfectly good.

The topic is not about the athletes of the world - it is about the 95% that don't have special conditions.

The machines in question would be paid for by everyone though only a few would have any benefit - but then an athlete already knows their body condition as far as fat goes. This marvelous invention is something that should die on the designers shelf.

I have no disagreement with you concerning the machine and its limited usefulness vs. cost.

The water displacement theory doesn't work in this case. The point of the scanner is that it tells you the volume of different parts of the body, as well as the whole body.

Doctors are primarily interested in the volume of abdominal fat as an indicator of health risks because excess fat around the middle (visceral fat) is the most dangerous kind of excess weight. What's most important from a health point of view is not your overall weight or volume, but the volume of fat around your middle - and existing techniques like water or Bod Pods can't measure just this part of your body.