Waist-to-height
Your waist divided by your height, taken with a tape in a minute. An optional body measure, outside the ten stations.
- Method
- Tape measure · one minute
- Equipment
- A soft tape measure
- Attempts
- One
- Reference
- Reference lines
Protocol
Stand relaxed, breathe out gently, and measure around your waist midway between the lowest rib and the top of the hip bone.
Keep the tape level and snug but not pressing. Use the same landmark every quarter.
Enter the waist. The app divides it by your height from your profile.
Safety. Nothing to watch out for.
How it is scored
Not a percentile. Across 11 cohorts and 760,190 people, each 0.1 higher ratio went with 24% higher all-cause mortality; risk was lowest at 0.50 and clearly higher by 0.55 (Jayedi 2020). It is a body measure, so it sits outside the ten stations.
Reference lines
No population table exists, so there is no percentile. The result is read against lines a named source has stated, or tracked against your own history.
Source
- Year
- 2020
- Sample
- 760,190 people
- Who
- 72 cohorts, 2,528,297 participants; waist-to-height ratio in 11 cohorts, 760,190 people
- Sexes
- Women and men
An outcome study, not a norm table: one cut-off for all adults, no age or sex bands. Tape placement varies, so use the same landmark every quarter. Associations, not causes.
Reference lines shown with the result
- Lowest risk: 0.50Jayedi 2020 (BMJ; 11 cohorts, 760,190 people): all-cause mortality was lowest at a ratio of about 0.50.
- Clearly raised: 0.55Jayedi 2020 (BMJ): risk was significantly higher by 0.55; each 0.1 higher ratio went with 24% higher all-cause mortality.
Change that is just noise
A change smaller than 0.01 is treated as noise (tape placement; reported to 0.01).
Limits of the reference
What the source cannot tell you, and where the app has had to make a choice the source did not make.
- An outcome study, not a norm table: one cut-off for all adults, with no age or sex bands.
- Tape placement varies between people and between days. Use the same landmark every quarter.
- The mortality figures are associations, not causes.