Is Inactivity Killing You?

Metabolic Syndrome is a relatively new player to the game of chronic illnesses. What is most disturbing about this one is that it is essentially a lifestyle disease due predominantly to our society of convenience. That’s right, our everyday habits, actions and choices are killing us. Having just one of the following does not indicate you have the Syndrome but it does put you at greater risk. The more of these you have in combination further increases your risk for heart disease, diabetes and stroke. There are really no visible symptoms of Metabolic Syndrome other than an increased waistline, which is why this can be so insidious.

Here are some of the risk factors:

Overweight/Obese – increased abdominal fat is a much greater risk than fat elsewhere in the body.

Sedentary – little to NO structured exercise and little to NO informal activity like walking and playing with the kids

High Blood Pressure – 140/90 or greater.

High Blood Fats (TG) – > 200 mg/dL

Low HDL (Good Cholesterol) –men <40 mg/dL; women < 50mg/dL

High Blood Sugar (Glucose) – a largely processed carbs and refined sugar (sweets) diet and/or increased insulin resistance (the hormone becomes less effective at removing glucose from the blood after eating). Some research indicates that high carb/sugar diets cause insulin resistance and some indicates this could be hereditary (a precursor to Diabetes).

The good news is every single one of the risk factors can be avoided or improved with changes in activity and nutritional habits. With aggressive lifestyle changes, Metabolic Syndrome can be slowed down or reversed. For more info click here.