I'm reading The Daily Mail this morning because Instapundit (at Facebook) linked to this other thing: "Super fit personal trainer and champion bodybuilder told she's OBESE by bungling NHS nurse who claimed her BMI was too high and told her to 'eat less move more.'"
For the record, here's my opinion on the "obese bodybuilder" article, which I posted on Facebook:
I understand a performer wanting to do PR, but this is a bit ridiculous: "I was made to feel as though I was overweight, over-eating and I felt a knock in my confidence." [ALSO: "It left me feeling belittled, insulted and confused."] Come on! I'm sure BMI is an inaccurate basis for assessing individuals. Everyone knows it's not a good fit for someone with big muscles (though who knows what this person looked like on the day she went to the health clinic?). But wouldn't this person know that and take it into account rather than experiencing "a knock" to her "confidence"? It's just another trashy DM article feeding off an entertainer's interest in self-promotion. What's DM's BMI?
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Everyone knows it's not a good fit for someone with big muscles (though who knows what this person looked like on the day she went to the health clinic?).
Apparently the NHS staffer didn't know. It's not like this woman was a lump who miraculously buffed up the day after her consult.
Yeah. That it was the government citing it should be enough of a reason to have some concerns.
Quads of gold?
As far as the comment about Ivanka's kids, I hope these same people don't mind me calling Chelsea's daughter a corrupt shitstain-waiting-to-happen. Since kids are now fair game and all...
Keep in mind this is the NHS, it's not out of the realm of possibility that she might be refused treatment at some time in the future because her government record states she eats too much and doesn't move enough.
There is a useful lesson in the DM article: professionals in the health-care industry are not nearly as wise or informed as the public thinks. They can be stupid and uninformed. The really good ones are rare.
Since muscle is the densest tissue in the body, people with well-developed musculature will have very high BMI, because it simply divides weight by the square of one's height. I imagine that every pro athlete in the US has a higher than normal BMI, except possibly PGA golfers and long distance runners.
Bike Mike, brain is denser than muscle. Bad-dum-ching!
Like American lefties the Brits love to hate the Trumps. It helps them cope with the problems of their own ridiculously fucked up political situation.
People who grew up to be unpleasant think they can spot evil in others people's children.
The problem with BMI miscalculations is more common than some realize because the height/weight based methods don't account for those a couple of standard diviations out from the mean. You have to have an immersion test done to get accurate reading for every type of body, and those are time consuming and require special equipment.
"Those kids will grow up to be evil."
There's no hate like Leftist hate.
[ALSO: "It left me feeling belittled, insulted and confused."]
Crybullying. It's almost like tactics started on campus migrate to the broader culture.
@Bob Ellison, I'm just repeating what I was taught. But now that you mention it, I'm certain that ARM's brain is denser than lead. Ditto Inga.
Ah, there's more of that Leftist compassion and empathy they keep telling me they possess in such bounteous amounts.
The bodybuilder is pictured in competition form, which is reached who knows how. You don't know how she looked when she went to her health appointment. She was in championship form in 2012. Is that when the photos were taken, 5 years ago?
Anyway, the woman is 4'11" and 143 pounds. Do you think it was so terrible for the health worker to tell her she needed to lose weight?
@Althouse, yes.
Speaking of children who will grow up to be evil, there is no hope for Charlotte and Aidan Mezvinsky, with three criminals among their four grandparents.
"Apparently the NHS staffer didn't know."
I'm glad you said "apparently," because you don't know she didn't know. Did the DM do anything more than pass along PR from the bodybuilder?
How do you know the worker didn't say: BMI can be inaccurate for an individual, especially someone like you with a high proportion of muscle, but you should know that it's 28.9 and that's considered overweight and almost obese. I'm required to tell you that and you should think about it along with other factors about your health.
Keep in mind this is the NHS, it's not out of the realm of possibility that she might be refused treatment at some time in the future because her government record states she eats too much and doesn't move enough.
You really don't know a thing about the NHS other than the horror stories perpetrated by equally ignorant people like Instapundit.
And a number of Labour Members of Parliament at PMQ's, where they spend about 20% of the time fussing about the NHS.
@Bob Ellison, add Freder to my list.
And that is after 69 years of owning the NHS.
This should give pause to any Congress critter. They adopt this tarbaby, they will be holding it forever.
The NHS is true single payer socialized healthcare. Doctors, hospitals, caregivers are all government employees. Why not continue to keep our system but expand Medicare, making it a Public Option? The infrastructure is already in place. People pay premiums for Medicare, it's basically insurance. People still buy private insurance to supplement Medicare as they will only cover 80%. Why not allow everyone to buy into Medicare? The pool will be massive, driving down healthcare costs. Healthcare providers remain private or public entities. Base premiums on income perhaps. We can do better than Obamacare and don't need to go down the road of true socialized medicine. Who knows, maybe Trump would be in favor of such healthcare, as he hinted at during the campaign.
Britain could create the NHS because most hospitals and clinics already were owned by the local governments, so people did not care very much if they were taken over by the national government.
This is not the case in the U.S.
Hence the attempt to accomplish the takeover second hand by controlling the "insurance" industry rather than the healthcare providers themselves directly.
This gets to be a very complicated mess and can't ever work.
Orthodox Christian theology, and being the father of three, and a former child all tell me that children don't become evil. They start out that way.
How do you know the worker didn't say:
Oh good grief! How do you know the worker didn't say "On my home planet of Rigel 6 we roast and eat people with your BMI"?
Ann Althouse - yes, because she did not need to do so and there is a good chance that doing so would worsen her health! First, at 25-29 people have the best life expectations, so that is one issue. If every person in the UK got below 25, the best data we have is that excess mortality would increase.
Second, her hip/waist ratio is very discordant with BMI, and it is the larger waist that correlates with medical risk rather than BMI. Also look at her neck. That woman is not carrying around excess fat.
Finally, just looking at her body tells me that this woman was at one point pretty overweight, and she got into bodybuilding as a way to deal with her genetics. She has done so successfully. A medical professional should never, ever fuck with success. A lot of this is genetics. Muscles are a very huge component of blood sugar control, because they serve as rapid-action stabilizers. They both pick up excess sugar very rapidly and release blood sugar when a person gets up and starts moving. Certain individuals have innate genetics that make that less efficient, and they need a higher mass of muscle in their body composition to avoid a range of problems, including a massive tendency toward Type II diabetes (the body compensates for the sudden drops of blood sugar by raising the carrying level of blood sugar). If Type II diabetics just add a few pounds of muscle and work it every day, plus amend their diet, many of them reverse the syndrome and need no medication. Their lipids drop and within a few months their organ health reverts to normal, and after a few more months, it gets superb.
And finally, we certainly know that she was not a porker when she met with the nurse, because her BMI was measured at 29, and in the photo shown she is at competition level, and would probably be 31/32. They add weight on the thighs and the arms, mostly, where it's genetically not as natural.
This is a no-brainer. Cardiovascular risks, on average, for lean individuals with even a small pot-belly are significantly higher than those with higher BMIs and a good waist/hip ratio. She is well within safe ranges on her muscle ratios.
Provided that the woman's blood work looks okay and she doesn't have high BP, I think the advice to lose weight and the very low calorie diet recommended is worse than useless and would significantly increase this woman's long-term health risks.
It's quite possible that this young woman has some form of sub-clinical McArdle's Disease (a mild form, very common in the UK), and needs to carry weight to deal with it. Carrying it as muscle will protect her from significant health problems. Because of her shortness, she has plenty of cardiac and lung capacity to carry that weight. The muscle and the exercise is going to keep her bones, CV system and organs healthy, and her blood sugar control is going to be much, much better, both of which are going to handle the small vessel effects.
In short, the nurse is probably very wrong. We are only hearing one side, so we can't be sure, but a BMI of 29 rarely if ever justifies that type of dietary recommendation.
A friend of mine is a 5 foot 2 former Air Force master sergeant, with a demanding physical job. Not an ounce of fat with a surplus of muscle, but he needed to get a waiver from the Air Force because his BMI got him labeled as obese.
Freder: "You really don't know a thing about the NHS other than the horror stories perpetrated by equally ignorant people like Instapundit."
Wrong again Fredo Mc Freddy breath! 1) My wife's grandfather, who was 86 and living alone in a small village in East Anglia when he developed pneumonia, was admitted to the NIH hospital in Norich for treatment. He never improved, so naturally after two weeks they released him and sent him home to do outpatient treatment at the clinic in his small village. Not sure how successful that would have been because the neighbor found him dead on the floor the next morning - probably his fault for dying before he got to the clinic. You see, 86 and not responding to normal treatment is often a death sentence in the UK. They have budgets you know, and some things take priority. 2) Now, ask me about the worderful French system, the one that almost caused me to lose a hand to gangrene because they "forgot" to give me antibiotics after putting twelve stitches in my hand to close a cut from a fall at work. The only thing that saved me was when it started to ooze pus I immediately got on a plane and flew back to the US where my own doctor cut the stitches, cleaned out the wound and put me on antibiotics via IV for three days. 3) Or, how about the Italian system? My wife broke her arm in Florence (spiral fracture, upper arm, took ten screws) and the kindly Italian doctor told he she needed to go back to Spain to get it fixed - they didn't have room, which I guess was right because she never even got out of the hall except for an xray. So, 36 hours in agony to get home, but boy, were we thankful we had private insurance that allowed us to use a private hospital outside of the Spanish system.
It's idiots like you who have all the answers even though you have never had to deal with a socialist system wherein the patient has no rights, can't sue for malpractice takes whatever doctor is on duty, and waits for an opening as long as it takes. That's why all my Spanish neighbors pay 75 euros/month to a private neighborhood clinic so they don't have to put up with the system for anything that can be fixed outside a hospital. The US has the best health system in the world, so eat it Freddy.
"Finally, just looking at her body tells me...."
By you are not looking at her. You are looking at a photo of her without knowing how similar it was to her condition when she went to the clinic.
I believe bodybuilders engage in various practices to affect the appearance of their body for a competition and do not maintain that look normally. I don't think it's too healthy.
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