From: Ian 
Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y uk.education.misc uk.education.schools-it uk.finance uk.food+drink.misc uk.food+drink.real-ale
Subject: Re: 10 Reasons to go veggie
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2006 14:19:46 +0100
Message-Id: 

On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:59:44 +0100, Prometheus wrote:

> In article <31303030343237394509E87209@zetnet.co.uk>, Guy King
>  writes
>>The message  from
>>"Dave Liquorice"  contains these words:
>>
>>> Hum, so that's why at 5'11" and 14 stone I have a BMI of 27.38 which
>>> is in the middle of the "overweight" range. I should be about 12
>>> stone, eek!
>>
>>And why's there no cubic term in the BMI equation? When I last looked I
>>was very defnintely three dimensional.
> 
> Because whilst peoples skeletal height varies considerably their
> skeletal width does not.

Actually there are formulae for calculating strength performance based on
physiological measurements. Dr Mike O' Carroll's formula is one of the
most used. This assumes that the skeletal component is a fixed constant
which is OK in the mid-range. I refined it with second order and third
order mathematical components to get a better fit at the extremes.

Muscle in general is not a strain on the heart since the exercise that
builds the muscle also builds the heart which is itself a muscle. In the
absence of drug abuse, the body will naturally match the development of
the heart to the development of the muscle and I know of no evidence that
heart disease is more prevalent in people that train with weights compared
with the general population. Drug abuse is the most likely reason that
competitive strength athletes die young from heart attacks.

Fat on the other hand narrows arteries and make it more likely they get
blocked by blood clots which is what causes heart attacks, strokes and
thrombosis. A symptom is high blood pressure, presumably because the space
in the blood vessels gets reduced. Therefore 3 stone of fat is much more
likely to cause you a heart problem than 3 stone of muscle if drugs are
not involved.

-- 
Ian Lynch
www.theINGOTs.org
www.opendocumentfellowship.org
www.schoolforge.org.uk