Understanding BMI & BIA | El Paso, TX (2021)

In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez, health coach Kenna Vaughn, Astrid Ornelas, Truide Torres, and biochemist Alexander Isaiah Jimenez discuss how to determine an individual’s BIA, BMI, and basal metabolic rate to help promote overall health and wellness.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Welcome to Dr. Jimenez’s hour with our crew and entire staff. We’re going to be talking today about basal metabolic rate, BIA, BMI. What is BIA?

Trudy Torres: Bioelectic impending analysis.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: OK, so BIA is bioelectric impedance analysis. And we’re going to be talking about weight analysis and figuring things that we got a couple of guests online. We have Alexander Jimenez, which will be coming in, as you can see him here on the line there. He’s on the corner side of the HDMI. So on the HDMI, you can see him. Hey, Alex, how are you doing? Where are you calling from? Where are we getting in with you?

Alexander Isaiah: I’m doing good. I’m calling here from Lombard, Illinois.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And what is it? You do, Alexander?

Alexander Isaiah: Right now, I’m going to school for chiropractic and N.D., which is a naturopathic doctor. It’s kind of doing a little bit of dual degree program here up north.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Oh, right, that sounds good. We also have on the line here we have Kenna Vaughn, who is the senior health coach over at our domain. We also have two wonderful individuals we have Trudy. Trudy, the director and the patient flow analysis individual, and Astrid, the chief editor at Injury Medical Clinic, who writes and document everything. Can everyone hear, OK? Yeah.

Kenna Vaughn: Yeah.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: All right, we’re all live. So what we’re going to be discussing today is the basal metabolic index, OK? And one of the things that we do here are we going to be able to assess the findings. So our goal today is to determine what the primary assessment is and the evaluation. And what we want to do is see what BMI is and why it is valid? The main topics are what we’ve used to assess body fat analysis and determine the indications and why we use BMI alongside BIA. Along with waist circumference variables also allows with waist-hip circumference variables and what it means because what we’re finding today is that these are great analysis tools that can be used to determine nature’s kind of a healthy cadence. It’s like blood pressure. We can kind of assess it. Then as long as we have other assessments and other evaluations, we can develop a comparative plan. Now all of them have their issues, and we’re going to discuss each of them in the course and the easiest and most cost-effective methods we can use. But one of the things that we can do is see why we would do this and what the purpose is. Now there are quite a few reasons for this in terms. What I’ve noticed is, let’s look at the HDMI. We have the assessments here, and we can see them on the live feed on the origination. We can see that there are different types over the history of BMI. We’ve gone from calipers that were just a method of measuring behind the arm, the behind the waist, along with kind of in the thigh region. We would come up with a measurement of which we were probably about five to 10 percent away from accuracy. But in that process, even using those as long as you did use it consistently, you had a comparative precision and a method of kind of determining a change in your body dynamics and composition. It may not be accurate, but it was accurately inaccurate, if that makes sense, right? So what we did here is we’ve looked at our graph here we have one thing called the underwater weighing what that was the standard. It is a research method. It is one of the most important things. And to determine actually what your body metabolism is, we have to use things of oxygen consumption because that’s what determines the great spot of metabolism. The metabolism is controlled by the amount of cellular activity that is happening in the body. So calculating how much oxygen debt and its use is an excellent way for researchers to find it out. But we don’t always have a laboratory that has; I’d say, you know, a hundred million dollars of stuff like a university of those. So it’s pretty much used in a research setting. You may have heard the DEXA test because it’s used as the clinical standard to look at bone density, specifically on the hip side and the lumbar spine. We use that to determine things such as osteoporosis, osteopenia. We get a variable number, and based on that number, we can calculate the changes in bone density. There are certain types of medications we use to determine a better outcome for those that have, let’s say, estrogen deficiency. Some people have a radical hysterectomy, where they do remove both ovaries at a young age for whatever the reason is, and the estrogen level is is is change. At that point, a DEXA test every few years is determinable. The standard of care for the DEXA is one every two to three years after about 50. To determine the changes in bone density. Now the skin fold that we just looked at here and you can see, as I kind of draw it and forgive me that I’m not drawing this, but we can see the BIA and the skin fold test are our other tests that are easy to find, but as we discussed, are inaccurate. As you see here, the body pod test, the cost of it is about 30 to 40000. It’s highly accurate, and it allows for your body to relax. Each one of these tests has specific standards. One of the things we have to do is prep for a BIA test or a BMI test. Now the BMI is something that calculates an easy way of figuring out just height versus weight. However, someone like Alexander, how tall are you, Alex?

Alexander Isaiah:  I am five-eight.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So five-eight individual. How much did you weigh when you were at your serious competition, and you were at your healthiest?

Alexander Isaiah: Probably around 195 to 197.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: 195. If you have a person who is five-eight and 197, I’ve seen him range from 210. And he still shredded; he can be that he would be having a very high and characteristically show as minimally obese. OK, now you can tell that he’s not obese. So, in essence, the BMI has flaw issues and bone density issues. Also, other disorders sometimes fool you, like sarcopenia, which is muscle wasting, and you wouldn’t be able to see the differences on those on the BMI. So what clinical assessments have determined is that the BMI and the BIA can be used together. Still, we live in a new technological world where we measure impedance. Impedance is like the filtering or the kind of slowing of electrons, or how fast and how quickly they go through. If electrons travel fast or something, there is low impedance, or if it can go slowly through it or it takes a longer time, there’s higher impedance or a more inadequate flow, which allows us to understand that fat is a not good conductor. So the more fat you have, the indirect relationship is, the slower the electrical current goes. Therefore, it’s less healthy. So using these electronic methods and what we have used in recent technology, we’ve used different companies such as 10 Tanita. Also, the In-Body has a fantastic system. We will discuss those that assess the BIA so that it’s the most accurate if the most accurate is underwater weighing. And let’s give that a relative value of one point zero. The actual BIA test is precise, so they are at point nine-eight. OK, once we see that ratio, we know we’re the closest with the BIA test, specifically with an eight-point contact. Now, an eight-point contact means with your fingers, your palm of your hand. That’s both hands before, and then you have two points of the foot that can hit on each foot. And that would be four from the feet if you can send the electrical current through the body in that way. The BIA assessment, such as the In-Body design, can determine a much more accurate assessment. So as we look at these tests, we can see what’s going on. So one of the things is we’re going to start looking at different companies, and we can look at what a BMI is being examined. So BMI is used so you can look at it from a relative number, and it measures kilograms per meter squared, and it measures the height of the body base of the body weight. So the higher the number, as you can see 25 to twenty-nine, you’re going to notice that the person is pretty much overweight. OK? I would venture to say that Alex would just because he’s in a situation where he would rate because he’s a much more muscular guy. He would not be healthy. He would almost reach close to 30 just because he has a large size and weight. But it measures only height and weight. So to determine the proper health, that’s where the BIA and its bioelectric assessment, OK, bioelectrical impedance analysis. So bioelectric impedance analysis, I should remember the words. So this is very typical. So one of the things I’d like to show you here on these things, Astrid, shows a copy of what a BIA machine would look like, OK? Here we have a bioelectric impedance assessment, and this is what it looks like. If you notice, you’ll be able to see, and I’ll take you through here, and we can see the ability to look at this particular region. You can see that the palm has one, and you’ll notice the two points on each foot. What we’re missing is the fender contact, but it’s eight, and it takes only 15 seconds to be point nine-eight versus one; accuracy is a pretty efficient way. It also takes seconds to do this and not 45 minutes to do something like the pod. So one of the things that we have to do is ask ourselves, why would someone do these kinds of things? Why would we do this? There are more accurate, more powerful ones, such as the five 50 model, which we do not have in our office, and the model that we have is the 770 in our office. So you can see it’s much more accurate, and we will discuss what goes on. But one of the things we want to do is how someone could do something at home that is logical? Kenna, you got some thoughts on how someone could check out their essential health by doing some measurements? What are those measurements?

Kenna Vaughn: Right. So one thing that’s easy to do at home is to check your waist circumference, which is relatively cheap. You just need one of those flexible tape measures. You can get it at the dollar store, or it comes in almost all your essential sewing kits. And what you’re going to do is just going to stand up nice and straight, and you’re going to take that tape measure where you’re going to want to make sure that you have no bulky clothes on. It’s best and just right on the skin, and you’re going to take it, and you’re going to fold it around where your belly button lies because that’s generally the most significant part of your waist. So you’re just going to wrap it around. You don’t want to be too tight where it’s squeezing you or anything like that because that will give you inaccurate results. Take a deep breath in and on your exhale. That’s when you’re going to get the best measurement, and it’s best to do it about three times that way. You make sure you’re getting that accurate read.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And what will that give us in terms of the circumference going to provide us with in terms of the assessment? What will they what will we get from measuring our girth?

Kenna Vaughn: That’s going to help see if you’re at high risk for cardiovascular disease or type two diabetes if you hold more of your fat around your abdomen. It shows that individuals are at higher risk for developing these later on in their life.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Got it. There’s another one that we’ve used that most people can use at home. It’s a real simple one, which is that one?

Kenna Vaughn: That one’s going to be the waist to hip ratio. So you are going to start with that waist ratio that I just explained. But in addition to that measurement, you’re going to go ahead and take your hip circumference.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Alexander, one of the things you did when you did your competition and when you were doing your stuff as a competitor, one of the things you were doing is that you were competing and weight was significant. Tell us how that kind of stuff affected you and how could the BIA be helpful in the world of, let’s say high-performance collegiate wrestling?

Alexander Isaiah: So when it came to wrestling, there was a couple of different things that you would do to approach the season strategically, so the season’s around six months. Most of the time, wrestlers tend to gain weight in the off-season. So you do a couple of different things. At the beginning of the season, they would have you use a caliper by a trained individual. They would measure your body fat and do a daily calculation to see how much weight you could lose promptly that was considered healthy for an average individual. And these individuals were allowed to cut a certain amount of weight within that time frame. So you kind of they pretty much gave you a plan of what you could and could not miss. I think the lowest I was ever allowed to cut was 184 and just showing you kind of what’s going on here. So what they would do is kind of show you what your BMI is. I’m going to switch over to my screen here, and you can see just kind of just the reference ranges here. So below eighteen point five, they have underweight eighteen points five to the rest of them. It’s going into those reference ranges. And like Kenna was saying, they would do an analysis depending on what type you had. So there’s a couple of you have your android, which is more of that Apple shape, and then your pear, which is kind of it. So they would measure females and males entirely differently. So as you approach, you would either take a couple of different dietary regimens and kind of approach to another aspect of how you would cut weight. So whether it was certain people did better just doing fats and protein, some people did better, just managing their carbs. Some people did better, just lowering their caloric intake. So by having that BMI, you can see what your total calorie output for the day for living costs is a good way of saying. And so, what’s the cost of living for every day for all your cells to function, and what or how much exercise would you do. So most of us were burning between a thousand to 800 calories between running in the morning or working out, and then a two and a half hour to three-hour wrestling practice, which is all intensive cardio training. So as the months went on, we were allowed to cut weight, and they would measure the weight that we were cutting at each tournament. So we were scanned in a way to enable us to cut weight correctly. One thing they did start implementing when I joined when I started wrestling in high school was morning weigh-ins, which prevented people from really cutting weight the wrong way and not having a good benefit. Because before you could cut all this amount of weight and you’d still have a 15 16 hour window to replenish all those glycogen storages and gain 15 to 20 pounds, depending on how dehydrated you were. So it was not a very healthy approach to cutting weight in that sense. So now, with everything that’s going on, athletes are training smarter, they’re cutting weight better, they’re managing. They’re pretty much themselves a lot better in that aspect.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So this is an excellent example of when you use these assessments. I remember, as we’ve done a lot with the wrestling, one of the ways that the university got involved and they do BIAs for people, but for the athletes, they started with the standard specific gravity test, and that’s a urine test to determine which protein is within their urine. Also, their electrolytes, such as potassium, sodium, and calcium, are highly dehydrated. What happens is the specific gravity rises, and they also measure specific gravity. In the beginning, it’s something to measure, and we can say that the kid weighs 200 pounds. His specific gravity is a certain amount, right? So we don’t want a kid cutting down where the specific gravity of their body concentration blood concentration is too high because that means they’re dehydrated. Those individuals can. Once we get that number, we can assess the person not just with body weight, but we can use BIA to follow them through the season much more accurately. So that allows a costly test, which is specific gravity, to go through the BIA. We also have issues, and we’re going to touch upon these. But there are other exceptional dynamics that parents can be involved. And parents like Trudy, you’re a parent of an athlete. What would you want to know in a BIA?

Trudy Torres: Well, I have two athletes. Well, I guess at what point is it safe with children to start watching, you know, and being concerned about BIA. Because certainly, as young adolescents, you don’t want them prone to eating disorders or being so self-conscious about their body composition that you have other side effects of psychological approaches. So that would be one of my concerns. When is it safe from a parental point of view to be watching about BIA and BMI?

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, that’s an excellent question. And I guess we would want to know that we know that our kids are healthy when they’re with us, but when they’re going through specific dynamic changes, we want to follow up and say, when is it getting too concentrated? When is the kid losing too much protein? When is a child running the risk of hurt because we have the stories of the 180 pounders cutting down to 135, that individual is not only running themselves at risk but in the world that they’re wrestling someone their body weight? They’re running the risk of being injured. So as a parent, I see that very important. The BIA offers us the ability to quantify and see the measurable changes as the child goes through the process. Now, if you can look at these areas now, there are other areas. And one of the things that we have here, one of our chief editors, has found some fascinating dynamics, specifically how assessing BMI has other consequences and things that we can determine for those things. Astrid is one of the things you’ve seen in the process when you have gone through the process. Tell us a bit of what you found out about BMI and BIA in terms of brain health.

Astrid Ornelas: OK, so there are quite a few research studies conducted on the importance of BMI and BIA and why we all want to know these. These are, I guess, these values so that, you know, because obesity or having excess weight, you know, you use BMI and BIA to determine, you know, it can affect a variety of functions. And like you said, research studies have found that obesity can affect your brain health. And there’s actually like probably one of the biggest things. Like, there are several things like obesity kind of like it can affect brain health by increasing inflammation in your body and could even speed up the neurodegeneration process like your brain ages a lot faster.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*:  Wait a second. So it actually makes your brain kind of lose its intelligence?

Astrid Ornelas: I wouldn’t say it makes you lose your intelligence, and it just makes it work slower.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Slower. OK. So brains that get smaller. Or, let’s say, dementia, and let’s say the brain loses its size and dimension. So those things are correlated to BMI as well.

Astrid Ornleas: Well, it’s essential to know your BMI or BIA, you know, interchangeably like depending on what would it be more important to know or the person? Because like research, studies have found that if you have excess weight or if you have obesity, it can change the size of your brain, and it can decrease or alter the gray matter and the white matter of the brain. And that can, you know, it can age your brain a lot faster, and it can slow down your cognitive functions, and it can even affect your memory. And you’ll have a more challenging time remembering things simply by having excess weight.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I read something that said even dopamine is affected by the production. Dopamine, potentially by is a correlate able or associated with BMI values.

Astrid Ornelas: OK, scientists have found that if you have a lot of excess weight, you know, if you’re overweight or if you have, you’re a person with obesity. The thing is that extra weight or obesity can affect what’s known as the pleasure and reward center of the brain. And that is, it’s pretty much the brain region that controls the release of dopamine. Wow. So just being obese in itself could even cause your brain to release less amount of dopamine. And that can cause a variety of mental health issues, and it could even lead to depression just by having excess weight.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So BMI, you know, let’s pop it up to Alexander on Skype. Make the screen bigger. Let’s go to the HDMI. He’s noticed some things here. What can you tell us about what you’re putting up on there?

Alexander Isaiah: Perfect. So you guys can see my screen right there?

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes, we sure can.

Alexander Isaiah: Awesome. So like Astrid was saying that adipose tissue does affect certain things. We have to take a look at adipose tissue at the cellular level. Typically, large amounts of adipose tissue in certain areas were meant to produce hormones, and not all adipose tissue is created equally. So we could see that the average individual would have what people call a beer gut. And here is the Pear-Shaped is what an average individual would have as well for most females. So we could see that we have pear, which would be gyno, and android, which would be the apple. But we could see that males who tend to have these tend to produce a little bit more estrogen affect the males differently. We can also see the ratio of significant health risk, so males have a ninety-five percent increase percentage for developing other health risks while females are different. When it comes to losing this type of weight, we have to keep in mind that not all adipose tissue is created equally. As my professor likes to say so, we can see that even though we have the same amount of adipose tissue in both areas or completely different areas, so most of the time, you’ll hear the saying that some women have trouble losing weight, which is correct because their adipose tissue located in different areas is not as metabolically active, which is good for them because they don’t produce as many hormones from it, they don’t get much stress from it. Now, on the other hand, visceral fat releases hormones, and this is the one that is problematic to individuals but can also be reduced a lot quicker. So when we’re kind of coming down to the breakdown of the main macromolecules of the body, we can see that we’re five percent minerals, calcium, 15 percent fat, one percent carbs, 60 percent water, mostly. So we can see what the reference ranges are here for the reference man age 20 to 24 years and the reference woman to age 24 and coming back to Miss Trudy when she mentioned the safe and recommended way. Well, it’s hit and miss. It’s different between males and females. For males, you want to keep anywhere between above three percent body fat. Anything below that becomes detrimental, and your body starts to break down. But for females, on the other hand, we can see that once they start dropping below 15 percentage, they actually will miss their period if it drops below that. So if a female athlete or a triathlete does this, it will, honestly. So there have been cases where female athletes develop osteoporosis just because they produce less estrogen, only because they drop below that 15 percent body weight and females need more adipose tissue than men. It’s just the way we came through evolution, and we were designed, and it’s just the way it is and needs to be. So for females, as long as they’re above 15 percent body fat, they’re always going to be healthy. For males as long as it’s above three percent, they’re always going to be healthy. It’s tough to attain three percent for males, but as long as they usually stay between this, you can kind of see what body mass is lean body mass muscle bar on kind of the breakdown of everything from there.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Answering Trudy’s particular question, because that’s the bottom line is what is the 25-year-old mom or what is the mom that’s 27 28 years old with the five-year-old little boy with a ten-year-old little boy? What has she got to do? Go ahead and put up the five 50 up there for me. What we’re looking at here is we want to be able to quantify these things. And one of the things I’d like to show you that is available in today’s research is the ability to determine certain things. Body composition analysis takes a lot of different studies and a lot of different dynamics in its research. We’ve been able to look at more specific questions for someone like Trudy and her child to assess the variable changes, body composition. And we’re going to follow up with the follow-up videos discussing this particular issue. But the studies today, we can see that we can assess muscle body fat analysis and the ranges versus the total body fat for this specific area. We can look at obesity analysis, and we can measure the ranges. We can look at percent body fat. We can look at extremity segmental lean body analysis versus one arm versus the other. This mainly comes true because let’s assume that someone has an ACL injury on the right leg or a left leg. You’ll notice that there will be a variation of body mass changes and to be able to determine if the body protein in that leg is getting more developed in the leg that has no atrophy. There will be noticeable changes in the amount of protein or the difference in percent body fat and water retention in that area. If someone has an ear swollen, you can also see the difference. Now we can start measuring the total area and body weight and start noticing this. This helps Mother Trudy’s worldwide understand the continuous you’ll notice down here on the bottom that there are reference dates here where we can see the changes as time goes by. And once you see the changes, it gives you a lot better tools as time goes by. The other thing that we’ve noticed here in this particular area is the awareness that we can do visceral body fat that Alexander referred to. OK, we want to be able to see what is inside the body now. This sort of body fat is if you open a body up, there’s fat surrounding each area like the liver and the intestines. We call the peritoneal area the perineal area that holds the body fat and the amount of tissue to protect it. And that’s how nature has done it. But we want to know how much it is, and if it does produce deficient hormones, like cortisol, or produces hormones that we know about that are for a different video, we can see that that would mean not good. So the person with peritoneal fat that’s around the viscera is at higher risk. So that analysis and to be able to give a point and see the changes are fundamental. So one of the things is that we can do, we can. And as we talked about here, you can see the impedance by the individual, depending on which extremity it is. So the tests regularly, though simple as that may be standing on a thing, are very complex and very accurate. So it does bode well for someone who needs it, with a family going through these kinds of techniques so that we can reassess. Initially, you can start someone with a detailed and accountable to the individual by a specific gravity to determine the concentration of body metabolites in the body and the proteins and the level of dehydration the person may have. You can follow up with a BIA repetitively through the history of a season, and you can get a lot of information about how your child is going if it’s a healthy type of weight loss. So, Alex, I notice that you put some things up there. Can you open that up, and you were putting up some interesting dynamics there? What is it that you’re noticing there? What did you put there?

Alexander Isaiah: So we can see that these are some of the graphs that I just got from classes here, so we can see the correlation is not cause for causation, but it does correlate to the data of many individuals. So this is taken from a study. And what they found is that people with a higher body mass index tend to have a higher risk for certain diseases, such as cardiovascular disease or cancer, or all other causes, just illnesses in general. And we also have to keep in mind that women have more receptors for those hormones produced by adipose tissue, so they are more susceptible to cancers. So we have to ask ourselves, what is the point of, you know, losing weight besides just the cancer thing? So when we come down here, we can just see the correlation of the lifestyle of individuals just if they lose. Ten percent body weight, so if their obesity decreases, their life expectancy increases about seven years. But not only that, but you can see where the circle of lifestyles changes for this individual who begins to change their lifestyle and incorporates those healthy choices into their daily environment.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Makes sense. So these are very, very important things to assess regularly. So what I’ve learned is the BIA BMI, in general, is a primary method to determine the overall health and the progression of fitness. So we want to get a better BMI and better assess the regions of the body and assess the dynamics of what someone can do to monitor their proper health. We’re going to be following through with follow-up studies and the follow-up information and on these follow-up programs to teach about what we use here in our little town of El Paso, which is a big town. But we’re where we’re going to be bringing families. We’re going to be bringing athletes to discuss those things. We’re going to get fundamental technical right on the screen. Right now, we have exciting fundamental dynamics to the level that we will be pushing the knowledge. Can you pull back to the screen? You can see it right there. You can see biochemistry. And we have our resident biochemistry expert right there. Alexander, tell us what we’re looking at there.

Alexander Isaiah: So here we’re just going through cholesterol synthesis and what it takes to produce cholesterol. So it’s kind of a very complex pathway, but we can also see that it takes your body a lot of stress to produce high cholesterol levels as well as cortisol levels. So kind of coming into the main breakdown of what kind of goes down if you have a significantly increased dietary cholesterol intake, not only are you putting more stress on the liver, but you’re also growing more LDLs. LDLs tend to be bad in general.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Im sorry, Alex. What are LDLs?

Alexander Isaiah: Low-density lipoprotein. OK, the problem with the low-density lipoprotein is that their primary job as VLDLs is to drop off the correct cholesterol to the proper levels. If they turn into LDL, the problem is that if they don’t get reabsorbed by the liver, or a good way of thinking of it is they are thought of as a suicide bombers, pretty much. So what they do is they deposit if they don’t deposit and don’t get absorbed by the liver because the liver is being bombarded by too much cholesterol. They will deposit themselves into other tissues, specifically the epithelial lining of the extracellular part of capillaries. Then, macrophages will try to eat them up and create these things called foam cells. Foam cells tend to aggregate in the huge cells with no purpose other than to aggregate within the layers of the capillaries.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Is that with the protective mechanism that the body does?

Alexander Isaiah: It pretty much tries to seal it off so it can’t affect anything else. But in doing so, it clogs arteries.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: OK, so BMI would determine the overall health of the body and fat. So we would tend to say that a person with a, let’s say, a high BMI, the extreme obese level, would have more of this action happening, right?

Alexander Isaiah: Exactly. But we also have to take a look at a different thing. So let’s say this person is already morbidly obese and has high cholesterol, so they go to an M.D. Their MD gives them a statin. So statins are good to an extent. So yes, they’re going to decrease the cholesterol level, but they’re also going to decrease; let’s see if I can find it here, the levels of all these other hormones being produced because cholesterol is the driving force for all these hormones. So if you are decreasing your cholesterol, you are just for women, to progesterone, for men, their testosterone, their dehydrate testosterone is kind of what people describe as the older man’s strength. As you get older, you produce more DHT, but you’re also decreasing these. Not only are you lowering cholesterol, but you’re also reducing it by 50 percent; Coenzyme Q. Coenzyme Q. It was the primary electron transporter for the electron transport chain, and it transports electrons that certain parts in the pathway won’t go into. But if you decrease that by 50 percent, most of these people feel tired all the time. And what’s the tissue that has the most mitochondria in the entire body must be the heart. OK, so the heart, the heart muscle, but the heart specifically. So not only are they decreasing their energy levels, they’re decreasing their ability of their actual, their lifeline, pretty much their heart to produce and pump blood and get energy. So by just reducing body weight, decreasing cholesterol intake in a moderate amount because cholesterol is good, we need it for everything. Too much of one thing can kill you, though. So within a reasonable amount, moderate amounts exercise dietary regimens. You don’t need to be put on statins, and you can be weaned off of those in time as your cholesterol levels get to an appropriate level.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s amazing, Alex. So that’s at the microscopic level. At the macroscopic level, we can assess that visceral fat. So the more visceral fat you got, the more hormones you got going haywire. And it’s fair to say that we have a situation where you’re less healthy with visceral fat. OK, so does anyone else have any input in here? Any other questions that you would want to know about Miss Trudy, as a mom of athletes?

Trudy Torres: No, I guess just as a woman on a side note, if all of this is very complex. Bottom line, if you have to lay down on your bed, tighten your jeans, you do not have a healthy BMI.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s very true. Right. So basically, if your gut hangs over, you’re in trouble, right? So that’s where you can use the simple tests of the waist circumference or the waist-hip balance. And pretty much the belly is three inches bigger than the hips; you are probably at a BMI that you shouldn’t have. So go ahead, Astrid; I see you want to say something.

Astrid Ornelas: So essentially, it’s just super important to find out your BMI or your BIA interchangeably pretty much for overall health because just having excess weight, as we found out here, can affect a whole variety of functions. The brain, brain health, cardiovascular health, and be it like finding your BMI, BIA, and it seems easy. You know, like an easy way to find out if your weight is like a healthy, at a more beneficial range and it all kind of goes like hand in hand with all these things as you’ve explained and as Alex explained. It’s pretty much like being obese or having excess weight; it can just disrupt our entire body, our entire system.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Exactly. Kenna, any other comments in terms of specifics on questions?

Kenna Vaughn: Not for questions, just for that waist to hip ratio. We’re going to want to make sure that for women, they’re under one and same thing for males. So you’re going to divide your waist by your hip ratio to get that number.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Right, so the numerator hopefully won’t be too more significant than the denominator, right? So that would be the numerator would be the waist, and the denominator would be the hip. Right. So we want to keep those in line. So all those kinds of things are essential. We’ve learned a lot today. We’re going to come back with a much more elaborate, and we’re going to spice this up in many ways. I want to thank Alexander for coming in from Illinois at the National University of Health Sciences. Way out there, there’s probably about 2000 miles away. We have Miss Trudy, who’s giving us a point of view. We have Astrid, who has given us the scientific approach to the brain and dopamine connection. But we also need to know that there are many reasons why the BMI, as we learn every day through the NCBI research institutes of information that there are many reasons to keep a BMI low and make sure you watch your BIAs in time. So we look forward to bringing it to you, and we thank you for watching us, and we look forward to giving you more information. Alexander, thank you so much for coming in from a distance and making it excellent for us all.

Alexander Isaiah: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it any time.

Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Thanks, Alex. Bye-bye.