Gender Differences of Body Mass Index in Adults of Pakistan: A Case Study of Multan City

Abstract

Obesity is an epidemic health problem worldwide that can result in many serious and sometimes, fatal diseases. It is very important to study such prevalence in developing countries, like Pakistan where people cannot afford the medical tolls, additionally, added to their non-meeting budgets, due to problems of obesity. The present study addresses the same issue by taking into account of 2000 adults from Multan city as case study of Pakistan. Although many of similar studies have also been carried out in the region but the present study evaluates the obesity prevalence according to recommendations of World Health Organization that in Asia Pacific Region, a person is considered to be overweight if BMI > 23 rather BMI > 25 and to be obese if BMI > 25 rather than if BMI > 30. According to this new definition, we report that more than 46% people are overweight (18.95%) and obese (27.85%). The percentage of normal people is just 28.65 while 24.55% are underweight. We report the mean MBI to be 22.87±0.086 (S.E), males have 13 kg more weight as compared to that of females have and males are more than 5 inches taller as compared to females, on the average. It is noted that mean BMI of males (23.51±0.11) and mean BMI of females (22.05±0.133) are different significantly. We find that 55.12% among males and 36.15% among females are either overweight or obese. The percentile plot of the data also displays the similar picture. We further report that married people are three times obese as compared to unmarried ones.