this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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[–] dream_weasel@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What science would change your mind? There's never going to be a magical cutoff number for cholesterol or height or weight that separates healthy and not healthy.

Heuristics are useful tools and sometimes that's the best you get. You need water to live, clogged arteries cause heart attacks, insulin resistance leads to diabetes. Exactly how much of any given thing causes bad outcomes is going to vary case by case, but doesn't negate trends.

I say all this as a former wannabe body builder who hasn't had a BMI under 25 in about 20 years, but I still know a BMI of 60 or 80 is no good.

[–] TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I though I was clear about this, but I'll reiterate.

  1. That the heuristic is accurate.
  2. That the heuristic is more accurate than other easily applied heuristics.
  3. That when the heuristic makes categories, the categories are backed by studies. These studies would show a statistical increase for specific health outcomes above this cutoff. That line would be tested relative to other proximal lines.
  4. These heuristics would include different recommendations for different populations such as race, biological sex, and age.

A better alternative, as I had previously linked to, would be abdominal fat as measured at the waist. Easy heuristic and closely correlated to CVD.

All of what you say is true, but you're not address my particular issues.

[–] dream_weasel@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 points 7 months ago

Thx sorry I didn't read all your comments in the post, I was using that question as a proxy to whether or not your discussion was in good faith. It seems like the answer is yes.

I frequently wonder how many better metrics are available that just aren't as easy to capture as stepping on the scale, grabbing blood oxygen, and taking blood pressure. I'm sure that part of the balance is value of vitals versus time or effort to collect them.