Are You at Risk for Metabolic Syndrome?

Metabolic Syndrome (formerly known as Syndrome X) 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. That’s right, our everyday habits, actions and choices are killing us. If you have Metabolic Syndrome: heart disease and/or diabetes are soon to follow. Here are the risk factors for Metabolic Syndrome:

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. The question is, will you?