SYDNEY: Health problems related to obesity are hitting Asians, including Indians, harder than other ethnic groups because doctors using a one-size-fits-all diagnosis fail to pick it up, experts said.
The standard way to define obesity uses the body-mass index — a measure of weight divided by height — but weight-related ill health appeared in East and South Asians at a lower cut-off point than in Caucasians, they said.
World Health Organisation guidelines say a BMI of 25 is healthy, more than 25 is overweight and more than 30 obese. Taiwanese academic Pan Wen-Harn told the 10th International Congress on Obesity in Sydney that such criteria missed a large number of people in Asia.
Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Indians experienced metabolic risks such as hypertension and diabetes at a much lower threshold, she said.
Indian researcher Naval Vikram said that while the westernisation of the Indian diet and less physical exercise contributed to metabolic disorders, most blame lay with genetic make-up.
Indians tended to have high body fat, a low body-mass index, high abdominal fat and a low waist circumference, he said. They suffered hypertension and lipid problems at a BMI of 22 or 23 — much lower than other ethic groups, he said.
“If we use international definitions we will be missing about 15 to 20 per cent of people whom we would be able to identify with a lower cut-off point. That's a substantially large proportion, taking the population of India,” he said.
Although the suggestion of a change was raised at a World Health Organisation meeting in 2004, the region needed formal guidelines, Vikram said.
The fact that studies were sometimes not accepted when researchers used Asian-specific measures led many to keep using the universal method in the region, he said.
