What Do You Need To Know About Metabolic Syndrome?

If you have a lot of metabolic abnormalities at the same time, such as insulin resistance and obesity, you may be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. If this is the case, your wellbeing is at further risk to developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus. For this diagnosis, doctors are looking for central obesity, meaning that you have a high waist circumference, and you also have at least two of the four other indicators. These are increased triglycerides, increased high density cholesterol, high blood pressure and high fasting plasma glucose.

You may not have heard of it, but metabolic syndrome is becoming more and more common, affecting the wellness of 20–25% of the world’s population. You’re at a higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome if you’re obese (especially in the abdomen), consume large amounts of saturated fats, or more than one or two standard drinks of alcohol per day, or more than four to six standard drinks in a single session at least once a week, are insulin resistant, have a family history of insulin resistance and/or type 2 diabetes, and if you have schizophrenia you are 2–4 times more likely to develop metabolic syndrome than non-schizophrenic individuals.

The key lifestyle factors leading to metabolic syndrome are your unhealthy eating habits and lack of physical activity. If this goes on for an extended amount of time, you could become obese and insulin resistant, which in turn affects your body’s metabolism and therefore increases your risk of metabolic syndrome. Once you are diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, it is likely that the syndrome will get worse. If you let it go untreated, you may develop additional metabolic abnormalities, or find that your pre-existing metabolic abnormalities, like abnormal blood pressure response to changes in dietary salt, for example, worsen as well.

When you have metabolic syndrome, you are up to three times more likely to develop cardiovascular health problems, and up to five times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, than someone who does not have metabolic syndrome. Therefore, your doctor will want to diagnose this as soon as possible, and will likely measure your waist to do so, to assess your central obesity. He might then order tests to assess your blood pressure and glucose, triglyceride and cholesterol levels.