A tape to Measure your health
The measurement of your body may reflect the potential illness inside your body system. How far is diabetes form you? Are your immunity system strong enough? You can know about your body first by simply a daily body measurement. So what does the numerical reading of the tape measure may indicate? You can primarily judge your health by measuring these four sites on your body.
Neck
Male < 38cm , female< 35 cm.
Do you feel the neck get tightened when you are wearing a shirt? An expert at Framingham Heart Study points out that a person who gets a thick neck, though his waist circumference is in normal range, he may have higher blood sugar, which will lead heart disease.
Therefore, measuring your neck circumference helps to recognize your upper body fat distribution. Upper body fat is closely related to heart disease risk. A thickening neck causes less High density cholesterol, which will block the transmission of cholesterol to liver for metabolism.
The optimal threshold neck circumference of men should less than 38 cm and women should less than 35 cm. Generally speaking, circumference of neck should be equal to that of calf. Every 3cm increased in neck circumference, accordingly, high density cholesterol inside your body may average decline 0.12 mmol/L. The figure on women is 0.15 mmol/L.
When measuring neck circumference, tester should stand straight and keep both arms naturally drooping. Mouth should slightly open to relax muscle tension. Place the tape measure on the seventh cervical vertebra ( the most protruding part of your nape) and below your larynx ( the thinnest part of your neck).
Waist
Male<90cm, female<80cm
Heart disease rick is not only relates to weight, but the site body fat lies in. Compared to systemic obesity, people with abdominal obesity have higher possibility to suffer cardiovascular diseases.
Fat accumulated in the abdomen is more harmful to that in the legs and hips. Oversized waist indicates exceeding visceral fat. It may cause diabetes, high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, coronary heart disease, stroke and other diseases. For male, they may easy to suffer colorectal cancer.
Research finds out that abdominal obese people have 40% higher risk to suffer cardiovascular diseases than other people. Middle aged men with a pot belly might at a greater risk for a sudden death, and the risk will increase if the belly gets bloating.
Many people mistook the waistband as waist circumference. But the standard measuring site is above your hip bone and the feet should be apart in the distance of 30-40cm.
Waist-hip ratio
Male: 0.85-0.90, female:0.75-0.80
It is believed that obese people are easier to get heart diseases, in fact, fat distribution matters more. That being said that waist-hip ratio is an important indicator to your health.
The way to measure is quite simple. Mark your waist and hip circumference first, and get waist circumference dived by the reading of hip. In the healthy range, the ratio is smaller means your are healthier.
For senior people aged above 60, ratio of men should more than or equal to 1.03 and that of women should more than or equal to 0.90.
Head
Optimal head circumference ration number is 60%
Small headed people are more likely to have Alzheimer’s disease. A German research stated that people whose head circumference is less than average number ( Male:58cm, Female:55cm) have increased risk to suffer Alzheimer’s disease. A bigger head remains more anti-aging neurons.
Cardiovascular disease expert Ecker found that clinically, the best width of face is 60% of of its length. People with such standard heads is not only good-looking, but also have better immunity to respiratory, mandibular and dental diseases.
Correct measuring steps: 1) measure the distance from the jaw to the calva(length); 2) measure the distance of both ears(width); 3) Width divided by length, and use 100 to deduct the number. Foe example, supposed the face length is 23cm, width is 14cm, so 14/23=0.61, 100%-60%=40%. The closer to 60%, the number is better.
