Measuring your waist compared to your height, your weight relative to your height, or just your waist size can all tell you something about your risk for heart problems—even if you don’t have...

Measuring your waist compared to your height isn’t any better than just using your BMI or waist size to guess your heart risk—all three are about equally useful in this group.

Women in this study were more likely than men to have high BMI and large waist size, and both of these were linked to higher heart risk markers—even if they didn’t have diabetes or high blood pressure.

Having a larger waist circumference is the main indicator of metabolic syndrome risk in adults from middle-income countries.

For older Chinese women, body mass index and waist size are equally good at predicting multiple health risks, but waist-to-height ratio is slightly less accurate.

For older Chinese men, measuring body mass index, waist size, or waist-to-height ratio all work about equally well to predict if someone has three or more health risks like high blood pressure or diabetes.