Slimmed down obesity diagnoses will mean millions need not lose weight

EXPERTS are calling for a "radical overhaul" of the way obesity is diagnosed, which could mean that millions of people do not need to lose weight.

- Hanna Geissler

A major global commission concluded that current medical approaches rely too much on body mass index ((BMI) without taking into account health or illness at an individual level.

Instead, they proposed a more nuanced approach, including measures of body fat such as waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratio.

The system would see people categorised as having either clinical obesity if their weight is affecting their organ function or an ability to complete day-to-day activities or pre-clinical, where they do not have ongoing illness but have a higher risk of health problems.

People with pre-clinical obesity could be offered advice on how to reduce their risk. Some may only need counselling and monitoring rather than active treatment, the commission said.

Flawed

Professor Francesco Rubino, the group's chair and an expert in metabolic and bariatric surgery at King's College London, said adopting the proposed system would help to reduce over-diagnosis of obesity in the NHS.

He added: "Some people who are today classified as having obesity by BMI, they might be athletes, play sports, very active, might have very strong bones.

"Saying that, those people can have obesity and then classifying them as having a disease would obviously be an over-diagnosis.