Know Your Numbers
If someone told you that four basic numbers give you a snapshot of your health, and a road map for improving it, would you believe it? It's true. They are:
Blood pressure
Cholesterol
Glucose
BMI (body mass index)
By knowing your numbers, you can gauge your risk for serious health problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke and even dementia. When you make changes in your lifestyle, the numbers can mark your progress.
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What are your numbers? Find out by having a Mission Health Screening.
Your Target Numbers
Below are the healthy ranges to work toward. You'll often see these written out with clinical terms like mg/dL and mm Hg. Your provider can explain those terms. For you, the important thing is the numbers themselves:
Blood Pressure
less than 120/80
Cholesterol
Total - below 200
LDL - below 130
HDL - above 50 for women. above 40 for men
Triglycerides - below 150
Glucose (fasting)
between 70 and 99
BMI
between 18.5 and 24.9
Calculate your BMI
Learn more about BMI on our web site, or visit the CDC web site on about BMI.
Other tests:
In addition to the percentage of body fat you have, some experts emphasize the importance of where this fat is distributed and stored in the body. Studies have shown that when fat is stored around the abdomen, you are more likely to develop hypertension, cardiovascular disease and diabetes than if the majority of your fat is stored in the lower part of your body. You may have heard of this in terms of apple- or pear-shaped people. In this analogy, pear-shaped people, who store fat in the lower half of their bodies, have less risk of developing serious health complications from obesity than apple-shaped people, who store excess fat around their waist.
One of the ways to determine your risk based on abdominal fat is to consider your waist circumference. Men who have a waist circumference greater than 40 inches and women who have a waist circumference greater than 35 inches are at increased risk for heart disease and other obesity-related problems.
Another way you can evaluate your health risk based on fat distribution is to determine your waist-to-hip ratio. Divide your waist circumference in inches by your hip measurement in inches (the widest point around your hips and buttocks). A healthy waist-to-hip ratio for men is less than 0.9, and for women less than 0.8.
Learning and sticking to a healthy lifestyle can be a challenge. But as Dr. Bock points out in his video, knowledge is power, and by knowing these numbers and taking action to keep them in healthy ranges, you have a much better chance of controlling and preventing health problems - and living a healthy, happy life!
