Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of markers that tend to appear together, and is a harbinger of health problems to come.
Low HDL and high triglycerides are associated with increased risk for heart disease. (That is not to say they cause heart disease; maybe they do, maybe they don’t. Some third thing may cause all three. We don’t really know.) The markers for metabolic syndrome are these:
- Fat in the abdominal area
- High Triglycerides (or on medicine to reduce triglycerides)
- Low HDL (or on medication to raise HDL)
- High Blood pressure (or taking medicine to lower blood pressure)
- High A1c or fasting blood glucose (or taking medicine to lower blood glucose)
(HDL is the name of one of the particles that transport cholesterol around our body; HDL carries cholesterol back to the liver to be processed. It is known as the “good cholesterol.”)
Anyone with three or more of those markers is considered to have metabolic syndrome. The CDC estimates that about 100 million Americans have it. And the prevalence increases with age (over half of those over 60 have it).
Those with metabolic syndrome are more likely to fall victim to serious chronic disease, including (but not limited to):
- diabetes (type II)
- cardiovascular disease
- many types of cancer
- Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases
- depression, anxiety, bi-polar, and other mental health problems
- rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune disorders
- fatty liver disease
- polycystic ovarian syndrome
- gout
Insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome can be thought of as steps along the way towards type II diabetes. The progression looks something like this:
- We eat too much processed food which results in too much glucose and fructose sent to our livers for processing.
- We get excess fat deposited in our liver.
- Our liver grows less sensitive to insulin.
- Our baseline insulin grows higher, especially if we are eating a lot of foods that easily convert to glucose.
- Other tissues grow resistant to insulin.
- We start exhibiting the markers for metabolic syndrome
- Higher insulin levels cause other tissues to become desensitized to insulin.
- As our insulin resistance grows it becomes harder for our pancreas to pump out enough insulin to keep our blood glucose in a normal range.
- As our fasting glucose levels rise above 110 (or our A1c rises above 5.7) we are diagnosed with pre-diabetes.
- Our pancreas falls further behind and our fasting glucose levels rise above 125 (or our A1c rises above 6.5) and we are diagnosed with diabetes (type II).