Correlation Between Body Mass Index (BMI) and Waist to Hip Ratio (WHR) among Undergraduate Students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3923/pjn.2016.618.624Keywords:
Body mass index, obesity, waist to hip ratioAbstract
Body mass index (BMI) is a common, inexpensive and simple method to categorize individuals as underweight, normal weight, overweight, obese I and obese II. However, this method does not reflect body shape and fat distribution. Waist to hip ratio (WHR) is a more recent and accurate method to measure body fat distribution and can be used routinely. The purpose of this study was to compare BMI and WHR of Malaysian undergraduate medical students. The weight, height, waist line and hip line of 82 undergraduate medical students studying at SEGi University, Malaysia were measured and used to calculate BMI and WHR using the standard formula. For males, the highest mean BMI was recorded for Indian students followed by those for Malay and Chinese. However, for males, the highest mean WHR was recorded for Malay followed by those for Chinese and Indian. For females, both mean BMI and WHR were highest for Malay, followed by those for Indian and Chinese. No correlation was found between BMI and WHR among the overall and male participants respectively. However significant correlation was present between BMI and WHR among female participants (r value = 0.623). In conclusion, in this research, there was correlation between BMI and WHR in female population. Therefore the Malaysian females, specially Malay females should be more aware of their health, their food intake and they should take better care of their health, do more physical activity in order to have healthier life and get less exposed to diseases caused by high BMI and WHR.
References
Abdullah, A., R. Wolfe, J.U. Stoelwinder, M. de Courten, C. Stevenson, H.L. Walls and A. Peeters, 2011. The number of years lived with obesity and the risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality. Int. J. Epidemiol., 40: 985-996.
Romero-Corral, A., V.K. Somers, J. Sierra-Johnson, M.D. Jensen and R.J. Thomas et al., 2007. Diagnostic performance of body mass index to detect obesity in patients with coronary artery disease. Eur. Heart J., 28: 2087-2093.
Romero-Corral, A., V.K. Somers, J. Sierra-Johnson, R.J. Thomas and M.L. Collazo-Clavell et al., 2008. Accuracy of body mass index in diagnosing obesity in the adult general population. Int. J. Obesity, 32: 959-966.
Abolfotouh, M.A., F.A. Bassiouni, G.M. Mounir and R.C. Fayyad, 2007. Health-related lifestyles and risk behaviours among students living in Alexandria University hostels. Eastern Mediterranean Health J., 13: 376-391.
CDC., 2009. Body mass index: Considerations for practitioners. Ann. Hum. Biol., 34: 183-194.
Ashwell, M., 2009. Obesity risk: Importance of the waist-to-height ratio. Nurs. Standard, 23: 49-54.
Azmi, M.Y., R. Junidah, A.S. Mariam, M.Y. Safiah and S. Fatimah et al., 2009. Body Mass Index (BMI) of adults: Findings of the Malaysian Adult Nutrition Survey (MANS). Malaysia J. Nutr., 15: 97-119.
Bakr, E.M., N.A. Ismail and H.M. Mahaba, 2002. Impact of life style on the nutritional status of medical students at Ain Shams University. J. Egypt Public Health Assoc., 77: 29-49.
Brown, P., 2009. Waist circumference in primary care. Primary Care Diabetes, 3: 259-261.
Chan, D.C., G.F. Watts, P.H.R. Barrett and V. Burke, 2003. Waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio and body mass index as predictors of adipose tissue compartments in men. Q. J. Med., 96: 441-447.
Cheong, K.C., A.F. Yusoff, S.M. Ghazali, K.H. Lim and S. Selvarajah et al., 2012. Optimal BMI cut-off values for predicting diabetes, hypertension and hypercholesterolaemia in a multi-ethnic population. Public Health Nut., 16: 453-459.
Cockcroft, A., C. Gooch, C. Ellinghouse, M. Johnston and S. Michie, 1994. Evaluation of a programme of health measurements and advice among hospital staff. Occup. Med., 44: 70-76.
Dagan, S.S., S. Segev, I. Novikov and R. Dankner, 2013. Waist circumference VS body mass index in association with cardiorespiratory fitness in healthy men and women: A cross sectional analysis of 403 subjects. Nutr. J., Vol. 12.
Gahagan, S., R.M. Kliegman, R.E. Behrman, H.B. Jenson and B.F. Stanton, 2011. Overweight and Obesity. In: Nelson Textbook of Paediatrics, Kliegman, R.M., B.F. Stanton, J.W. St. Geme, N.F. Schor and R.E. Behrman (Eds.). 19th Edn., Saunders Elsevier, Philadelphia, PA.
Ayala, G.X., J.P. Elder, N.R. Campbell, D.J. Slymen, N. Roy, M. Engelberg and T. Ganiats, 2004. Correlates of body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio among Mexican women in the United States: Implications for intervention development. Women's Health Issues, 14: 155-164.
Hu, F.B., 2008. Measurements of Adiposity and Body Composition. In: Obesity Epidemiology, Hu, F.B. (Ed.). Oxford University Press, New York, pp: 55-56.
Wee, H.L., Y.B. Cheung, W.C. Loke, C.B. Tan and M.H. Chow et al., 2008. The association of body mass index with health-related quality of life: An exploratory study in a multiethnic Asian population. Value Health, 11: S105-S114.
IBM., 2012. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 22.0. IBM Corporation, Armonk, New York, USA.
Kelly, E.B., 2006. Obesity. Greenwood Publishing Group, USA., ISBN: 9780313334603, Pages: 224.
De Koning, L., A.T. Merchant, J. Pogue and S.S. Anand, 2007. Waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio as predictors of cardiovascular events: Meta-regression analysis of prospective studies. Eur. Heart J., 28: 850-856.
Leung, Y.Y., J.C. Allen, M. Noviani, L.W. Ang, R. Wang, J.M. Yuan and W.P. Koh, 2015. Association between body mass index and risk of total knee replacement, the Singapore Chinese health study. Osteoarthritis Cartilage, 23: 41-47.
Gierach, M., J. Gierach, M. Ewertowska, A. Arndt and R. Junik, 2014. Correlation between body mass index and waist circumference in patients with metabolic syndrome. ISRN Endocrinol., Vol. 2014.
Thoma, M.E., M.L. Hediger, R. Sundaram, J.B. Stanford and C.M. Peterson et al., 2012. Comparing apples and pears: Women's perceptions of their body size and shape. J. Women's Health, 21: 1074-1081.
Martinez, J.A., 2000. Body-weight regulation: causes of obesity. Proc. Nutr. Soc., 59: 337-345.
Norafidah, A.R., M.N. Azmawati and A. Norfazilah, 2013. Factors influencing abdominal obesity by waist circumference among normal BMI population. Malaysian J. Public Health Med., 13: 37-47.
Huda, N. and R. Ahmad, 2010. Preliminary survey on nutritional status among University students at Malaysia. Pak. J. Nutr., 9: 125-127.
Odenigbo, U.M., U.C. Odenigbo, O.C. Oguejiofor and P.O.U. Adogu, 2011. Relationship of waist circumference, waist hip ratio and body mass index as predictors of obesity in adult Nigerians. Pak. J. Nutr., 10: 15-18.
Ofei, F., 2005. Obesity-a preventable disease. Ghana Med. J., 39: 98-101.
Per, B., 2001. International Textbook of Obesity. John Wiley and Sons Ltd., New York.
Rising, R., I.T. Harper, A.M. Fontvielle, R.T. Ferraro, M. Spraul and E. Ravussin, 1994. Determinants of total daily energy expenditure: Variability in physical activity. Am. J. Clin. Nutr., 59: 800-804.
Rosmond, R., M. Chagnon, C. Bouchard and P. Bjorntorp, 2001. G-308A polymorphism of the tumor necrosis factor α gene promoter and salivary cortisol secretion. J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab., 86: 2178-2180.
Gupta, S., T.G. Ray and I. Saha, 2009. Overweight, obesity and influence of stress on body weight among undergraduate medical students. Indian J. Community Med., 34: 255-257.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2016 Asian Network for Scientific Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
