Just when you thought you needed a fancy BMI calculator, new data suggests a tape measure provides plenty of insight into your health. Via ABC news:
Waist size is a good indicator of a person’s risk of insulin resistance — an early stage in the development of diabetes and heart disease, researchers said Friday.
Waist circumference is already recognized as an independent sign of potential cardiovascular disease but Swedish scientists said it can also be used to gauge sensitivity to insulin.
“A waist circumference of less than 100 cm (39 inches) excludes individuals of both sexes from being at risk of being insulin resistant,” Hans Wahrenberg, of the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, said in a study reported online by the British Medical Journal.
In addition to gauging pre-diabetic states, the tape measure (pictured above) can be used to determine height, and the distances between objects. No word yet on when it will be available in the United States and at what stage of the FDA approval process it is at.
More at British Medical Journal…