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Personal Best

Measuring Our Fitness & Health

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

17/07/2017

BBC Radio Scotland - Personal Best, Measuring Our Fitness & Health

What are the most useful and reliable methods for measuring our fitness and health?

What are the most useful methods for measuring our fitness and health? Dr David Reilly explains when technology can be helpful and when we should listen to our bodies.

BMI test, activity tracker, bathroom scales, cholesterol check, calorie counting, heart rate monitor ... or just whether your jeans fit?! How do you measure your health and fitness? Gillian Russell explores the most useful and reliable ways to gauge our health and asks whether we have become too reliant on stats, figures and technology to tell us how fit and well we are?

Deborah Marshall from the University of Calgary talks about her new study looking at BMI (body mass index) which shows that we need to rethink how we measure healthy body weight.

Dr David Reilly from the Well Programme explains the extent to which technology and tests can be useful tools in measuring our fitness and health ... but why we also need to avoid becoming a slave to it all. Is listening to our bodies a better, more natural indicator of our health?

GP Dr Margaret McCartney visits the Institute for Clinical Exercise & Health Science at the University of the West of Scotland to undertake a VO2Max test. How accurate is it in determining her fitness levels and can it be a useful marker of health in general?

Margaret talks to Gillian about her forthcoming BBC Radio Scotland series Cradle To Grave which looks at some of the health challenges we face at different stages in our lives and how we engage with the NHS.

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