Blog Archives

Metabolic syndrome risk factors that increase your risk for heart disease and diabetes

Metabolic syndrome is really a clustering of risk factors that makes up the syndrome, like a high waist circumference. When you carry the weight around your waist, it puts you at higher risk of disease. It’s a low HDL cholesterol, your good cholesterol. When that’s low, that puts you at higher risk of disease. It’s a high triglyceride level. It’s a high blood pressure level, and it’s also a high blood glucose level, which shows risk for diabetes.There are five risk factors, but the National Institutes for Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified if you just have three of the five risk factors then you actually can be diagnosed as having the metabolic risk syndrome. It’s estimated that 23 percent of the population has metabolic syndrome, and really it’s the clustering of risk factors, so a lot of people have many of the risk factors but might not have three of them and might have other risk factors for heart disease that aren’t identified in the metabolic syndrome but also are at risk for disease.

It’s an epidemic of obesity in America, so some research study are trying to identify how they can help people lose weight and how they can help them keep it off. In the study, they looked at trying to reduce these risk factors for chronic disease by reducing weight but also reducing some of these other things — reducing waist circumference, abdominal obesity, reducing blood pressure, triglycerides, blood glucose, and increasing HDL by really having an emphasis on physical activity.

We’ve heard this from many patients, is that “every year I go to my doctor and I’m told that you’re healthy but you could lose a few pounds, you’re healthy but you could lose a few pounds,” and year after year they keep hearing this until pretty soon they have hypertension, they have cholesterol through the roof, they have all these different things, and that’s when it really makes an impact. What we’re trying to do is get the message out that even when your blood pressure is slightly high, even though your cholesterol isn’t high, your good cholesterol is low and that’s a risk. So, looking at some of these things, these borderline levels of things, trying to take care of these before they get out of control and you already have plaque build-up in your arteries, so it’s really the prevention piece of moderate amounts of weight loss can really make a difference. Yeah, you might not get back down to your high school weight, and that’s OK because even 10 pounds is going to reduce your risk for disease quite a bit. You might not lose the 50 pounds you want to lose, but losing that 10 pounds really can make a big difference.

A lot of times people think weight loss is just a big demon they have to conquer, and so they look at it as “oh, well, I’ll put it off until the new year or I’ll put it off until swimsuit season, or I’ll put it off until then because well, I’ve already blown this month, why even try?”. And, it’s not that way. You can do something today, just little, small changes can make a big difference and just those small amounts of weight loss can really make a big difference. That’s the hard thing is convincing people to go slowly with the weight loss, because when you do start exercising and you do make changes in your nutrition, you are really making significant changes in your life. You’re giving up things that you don’t want to give up. So, you want to see the results tomorrow on the scale and it doesn’t always happen, but if you can just stay with it and know that you’re going to see those results in a couple of months, I’ll ask you in two months if you’re happy that you stuck with it and you’re going to say, ‘of course, I’ve got 10 pounds off now,’ but it’s this yo-yo thing where you try to lose the weight real quickly and then you gain it back and you lose it and you gain it back, and I’ve run into so many people that have been doing this for 20 years, and if you can just go slowly and moderate the weight loss, then that’s going to be the key.

It’s confusing because metabolic syndrome is something that you can be diagnosed with, but really it’s a clustering of risk factors, so it’s not like there’s one specific test that says you have metabolic syndrome. It’s looking at all of these different five risk factors and saying, ‘OK, you have three of these five risk factors, so you have metabolic syndrome, which means that you’re at high risk for coronary artery disease and diabetes later on in your life.’

Source: Ivanhoe News

Vitamin A 15%
Vitamin C 25%
Calcium 25%
Iron 20%
Vitamin D 35%
Vitamin E 20%
Thiamin 30%
Riboflavin 35%
Niacin 20%
Vitamin B6 30%
Folate 20%
Vitamin B12 10%
Phosphorus 40%
Iodine 30%
Magnesium 25%
Zinc 20%
Copper 20%
Manganese 20%
Molybdenum 25%

Obese children are at greater risk of being obese adults

Therefore, the complications that stem from childhood obesity pose a threat to the adolescent’s current and future well-being:

Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes in children is a chronic condition that affects the way your child’s body metabolizes sugar (glucose). Type 2 diabetes is caused in part by a poor diet, and can often be reversed by eating healthier foods and exercising.

Metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome isn’t a disease itself, but a cluster of conditions that can put your child at risk of developing heart disease, diabetes or other health problems. This cluster of conditions includes high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol and excess abdominal fat.

High cholesterol and high blood pressure. Your child can develop high blood pressure or high cholesterol if he or she eats a poor diet. These factors can contribute to the buildup of plaques in the arteries. These plaques can cause arteries to narrow and harden, which can lead to a heart attack or stroke later in life.

Asthma and other breathing problems. The extra weight on your child’s body can cause problems with the development and health of your child’s lungs, leading to asthma or other breathing problems.

Sleep disorders. Sleep apnea, a condition in which your child may snore or have abnormal breathing when he or she sleeps, can be a complication of childhood obesity. Pay attention to breathing problems your child may have while sleeping.

News Source: THE SUN

Blood Sugar and Metabolic Syndrome

High blood pressure. High blood sugar. Unhealthy cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Excess abdominal (belly) fat. If you were to look into a crowd of Americans, say, at a football game or large concert, and start counting how many of them could check off all of these conditions as relating to them, you’d be tagging one of every six people. That’s forty-seven million Americans. Collectively, this set of conditions has a strange name: metabolic syndrome, or, stranger still, syndrome X. You may not intuitively put high blood pressure, for example, in the same category as metabolism, but all of these conditions share a unique relationship. And when they combine in the body, they can have an epic impact. These risk factors double your risk of blood-vessel and heart disease, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes. They increase your risk of diabetes by five times.

When you hear the word diabetes, most likely it’s related to type 2, so-called adult onset diabetes. It’s the most common form of diabetes; of the 23.6 million people with diabetes, 90 percent to 95 percent have type 2. Like type 1, this form disrupts the body’s ability to metabolize sugar for fuel, but type 2 is not an autoimmune disease. In type 2 diabetes, the beta cells of the pancreas continue to make insulin, but when there is too much fat, there is a resistance to insulin, so the body cannot use it effectively. When that happens, a person is said to be insulin resistant and prediabetic. As the disease progresses, insulin production slows down after several years, and the result is similar to what occurs in type 1 diabetes: glucose, the body’s preferred form of energy, builds up in the blood and the body cannot efficient use of its main source of fuel.

Unlike type 1, this form of diabetes is associated with older age, obesity, a family history of diabetes, physical inactivity, and ethnicity. About 80 percent of people with type 2 diabetes are overweight, which is why this type gets so much media exposure now that obesity rates have soared. For some, reversing this disease is possible through changes in diet and exercise habits. But for others, the ravages of this disease can make for a long struggle that destroys the quality of life and brings a complicated morass of medical challenges.

Because activated vitamin D can increase insulin production, it’s no surprise that research has indicated that UVB radiation – and hence, adequate levels of vitamin D in the body – may have an indirect role in preventing type 2 diabetes. We have yet to learn the exact effect vitamin D has on the risk for type 2 diabetes, but the evidence continues to collect showing a clear association between sufficient vitamin D and efficient cellular metabolism. Numerous longitudinal studies have consistently demonstrated that people who suffer from type 2 diabetes typically have low vitamin D levels.

A lack of vitamin D is related to both insulin resistance and impaired pancreatic beta cells, which are the sources of insulin for the body’s metabolism and which do possess vitamin D receptors. In studies done with mice, beta cells lose their capacity to secrete insulin when their vitamin D receptor isn’t functioning as it should because of low vitamin D.

In 2004, researchers at UCLA unveiled their findings after trying to make better sense of the CARDIA (Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults) Study, a population-based look at vitamin D’s role in metabolic syndrome. The CARDIA Study examined a sampling of 3,157 black and white adults aged eighteen to thirty years from four metropolitan areas in the United States. What it found was that among over-weight adults, the more milk peo9pel drank, the less likely they were to be insulin resistant. The numbers, in fact, are quite staggering – people with the highest dairy consumption had a 72 percent lower incidence of metabolic syndrome. The study concluded that dairy consumption could reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The UCLA team confirmed this conclusion in its own study and reported specifically on how higher levels of vitamin D correlated to this lowered risk.

Even more revealing have been the studies done on the effect both vitamin D and calcium – the high-powered couple – can have on reducing one’s risk for diabetes. One large study published in 2006 by Diabetes Care that looked at middle-aged women concluded that a high daily intake of vitamin D (greater than 800 IU) and calcium (greater than 1,200 milligrams) was associated with a 33 percent lower risk of type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetics tend to be stuck in a vicious cycle whereby they battle weight problems and lack the energy or motivation to exercise, precipitating other health challenges – from their overworked organs to their inability to get a good night’s sleep. The number of potential hazards that flow from their condition and resulting secondary conditions is practically limitless. Add to that a vitamin D deficiency, knowing all the areas in which vitamin D can have a positive impact, and you can quickly grasp the magnitude and intricacy of this problem. Achieving a break in the cycle typically requires a complete lifestyle and dietary change, as well as a focus on reducing stress levels that can thwart weight-loss efforts and perpetuate hormonal imbalances.

In the last few years, the spotlight has been turned on teens, who are currently changing the actuarial tables. Soaring obesity rates among our adolescents may actually shift their longevity, snipping two to five years off their life spans as compared to their parents’. And new research has also linked low levels of vitamin D to high blood pressure and high blood sugar in this age group – the very risk factors for heart disease and conditions associated with this elusive metabolic syndrome. A team of researchers found that teens with the lowest vitamin D levels were more than twice as likely to have high blood pressure and high blood sugar than those with higher vitamin D levels. They were also four times more likely to have metabolic syndrome than their counterparts with optimal levels of vitamin D. The vitamin D-deficiency pattern was consistent with earlier findings in that blacks had the lowest levels, followed by the Mexican Americans; whites had the highest levels, but all of the teens showed a deficiency. Further research will determine the extent to which vitamin D lies behind these health problems and how much of an impact it can have in preventing, treating, and reverting these problems.