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Does BMI Really Matter to Our Overall Health? Findings from a Cross-sectional Analysis of Middle-aged and Older Adults in India

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Abstract

We explored the association of body mass index (BMI) with overall health among middle-aged and older Indian adults. The cross-sectional sample included 42,575 respondents (45 years) from the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI), Wave 1 (2017-18), including middle-aged (23,811) and older adults (18,764). Overall health was assessed by using 19 health indicators, including 10 chronic diseases. Binary logistic regressions were utilized to examine the effect. The overweight and obese older adults were associated with higher life satisfaction (LS), happiness, better handgrip strength (HGS), better cognition (CS), and less insomnia, less depression but a higher prevalence of chronic diseases, i.e., hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, bone or joint diseases, dementia, cholesterol, and vision problems, compared to a normal BMI. In contrast, middle-aged and older adults who were underweight were less likely to have major chronic diseases, but all of their other health conditions were worse than the normal BMI. However, the association between BMI and stroke, cancer, or dementia showed no significant difference due to lower incidence. The results did not show much difference between middle-aged and older adults. The results stress the potential association between BMI and several health measures among middle-aged and older adults, which in the future may help in controlling BMI to achieve successful aging in India.

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Data Availability

The study makes use of secondary data, which is available on specific request via https://iipsindia.ac.in/sites/default/files/LASI_DataRequestForm_0.pdf

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Acknowledgments

We are thankful to the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) for helping us with the survey data, and we are also grateful to the LASI research as well as the field team for their data collection. The authors are also thankful to all anonymous reviewers for giving important observations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Krishnagar Government College, Krishnanagar, West Bengal, 741101, India

    Alok Roy

  2. Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, 110067, India

    Alok Roy

  3. Department of Family & Generations, International Institute for Population Science, Mumbai, Maharashtra, 400088, India

    Papai Barman

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AR: conceptualization and designing of the research paper, data analysis, and manuscript writing; PB: helping during the analyses, and participation in constructive discussions. All authors read carefully and finally approved the manuscript for submission.

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Roy, A., Barman, P. Does BMI Really Matter to Our Overall Health? Findings from a Cross-sectional Analysis of Middle-aged and Older Adults in India. Population Ageing 17, 71–89 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12062-023-09413-w

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