September 20, 2000
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contact Kim Johnson at KU's Department of Health, Sport and Exercise Sciences at (785) 864-0797, or University of Kansas, 104 Robinson Center, Lawrence KS 66045. A complete brochure is available online More articles Obesity misunderstood as lack of controlIs obesity a disease? What your doctor won't tell you
Where can you find Body Mass Index charts? Many pharmaceutical companies provide them free of charge to doctors and health professionals. Federal health agencies and groups post them on the Internet. The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute posts the chart on the Web. Click here.
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Dr. James Early, professor at KU's School of Medicine in Wichita, and Joseph Donnelly, exercise physiologist on the Lawrence campus, say they hope to see the day when patients expect a physician to include taking BMI along with pulse and blood pressure as part of routine physical examinations.
Early will be a featured speaker during KU's second annual conference on the prevention and treatment of obesity Sept. 29 and 30 at the St. Luke's Hospital Spencer Center for Education, 44th and Wornall Road, Kansas City, Mo.
"This conference is for all health professionals, but particularly for doctors who want to know how to treat obesity," Donnelly says, noting that there is debate about whether obesity is a disease. One result of that debate is that medical training for treatment and prevention of obesity has been minimal.
Health risks associated with obesity include heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, gall bladder disease, sleep apnea and some cancers.
"Jim Early, particularly, is crusading to get BMI included as part of the vital signs taught in medical schools all over the country," Donnelly says. Early directs an obesity clinic in the Prevention and Health Center at the Via Christi Regional Medical Center in Wichita.
Referring to a BMI chart, Donnelly says, "You begin to be classified as overweight at 25 BMI. And you're classified as obese at 30BMI."
About half of the adult American population is either overweight or obese. If you visualize "obese" as a person requiring two seats on the bus, forget it. If you are 5 feet 5 inches tall and weigh 180 pounds, or 6 feet tall and weigh 221 pounds, your BMI is 30, for example. According to BMI charts, the Rubenesque or full-figure physique is likely to be obese.
Obesity researchers like Donnelly and Early believe a first step to helping more people control their weight is to make them aware of their BMI.
If physicians record a BMI measurement routinely the same way they record a patient's weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, patients are likely to get the message that BMI is important to their health, Donnelly says.
Many people are now aware of cholesterol numbers, Donnelly says. "If I see my cholesterol numbers and they're high, I don't need a physician to tell me to change my diet and exercise. So the simple taking of the BMI might change behaviors."
For more information on the obesity conference, contact Kim Johnson, at KU's Department of Health, Sport and Exercise Sciences, (785) 864-0797, kim@ku.edu or University of Kansas, 104 Robinson Center,Lawrence KS 66045. For a complete brochure: http://www.soe.ku.edu/depts/hses/index.html.
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