Posts Tagged ‘metabolic syndrome’

Large stomachs are tied to dementia, and that equals less brain power. Big stomach smaller brain is not what I would call a good trade. People in their 40’s who have large stomachs are more likely to have dementia by the time they reach their 70s. There was a study done with 6,583 people aged 40 to 45 in northern California. They took the abdominal fat measurements of all the participants.  They found that the people with the most abdominal fat were three times more likely to have dementia than those with the lowest amount.

Since, we have an army of people with too much abdominal fat, this nation will be losing its brain power. Having a large belly was a risk factor whether the people were normal weight, overweight, or obese. This happened irregardless of other health conditions such as diabetes, stroke or cardiovascular disease. The overweight crowd with a large belly was 2.3 times more likely to develop dementia than a normal weight individual.

We know that a large waist alone is a risk for metabolic syndrome. That means an increase in strokes, diabetes, and heart disease. Women are more likely to have abdominal fat. High abdominal fat in elderly adults was tied to brain atrophy. This research was published in the March 26, 2008 online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

This is a matter of big belly small brain. So now we have a new way of checking a future employee’s qualifications. With a slow job market this just narrowed the field. Belly fat releases hormones and chemicals that are harmful to the brain. From all indications fat in the abdomen area is the most harmful. Having an spare tire has been linked to diabetes, heart disease, and stoke. Now it could be linked to unemployment.

Belly fat is not just hard on the eyes it is harmful to all your organs. The risk of dementia increases as the belly enlarges. Fat thighs are now starting to look better. They do not pose the same risk. The easiest fat to lose is from the stomach area. In middle age is when you start to notice the weight in that area.

This beer belly has been implicated in making people hungrier, which in turn causes more weight gain. Dr.Yang and his colleagues at the University of Western Ontario Institute have found that abdominal fat tissue can make a hormone that stimulates fat cell production. The reason why fat lands in the spare tire is because that area has more cortisol receptors than other places.

Stress causes your body to release cortisol, and this hormone signals your liver to release excess sugar your body isn’t using. This release of sugar makes you feel hungry. The only way to deal with this issue is though weight management and some form of exercise. Walking and exercise lower stress levels, while trimming the fat. We know that large stomachs are tied to dementia, so its time to get moving.

METABOLIC SYNDROME

Metabolic syndrome is the plague of the 21^stCentury. It affects more lives than any infectious agent so far. It is as potentially destructive, and it now affects the old and young alike. The question should be is how we arrived to this point. It is now as American as apple pie, even thought recent surveys from places as far as away as Maori shows that 32% of the population has this syndrome. In the Pacific the estimate is 39%, and 16-40% of New Zealanders of European descent suffers from this.

CONDITIONS

The metabolic syndrome includes high cortisol levels, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, fatigue, and the “spare tire” around the middle. This syndrome causes a fat gain, especially in the belly, and widens the waist. This predisposes a person to diabetes and heart disease. The diagnosis to start is usually pre- diabetes, borderline high blood pressure, raised triglycerides, and higher than normal cholesterol. This is a drug companies dream, and your nightmare. You are now what I call a recyclable patient.  

The conditions related to metabolic syndrome are Insulin resistance, obesity, Glucose intolerance, elevated triglycerides, low HDL the good cholesterol, predominance of small dense LDL cholesterol particles. These are the ones that line the arteries, the large fluffy particles of LDL cholesterol go thought and are not a major cause of problems.  Also, Hypertension, Oxidative stress, and inflammation are part of the syndrome. These are possible indicators of a predisposition to some serious chronic conditions including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, polycystic ovary syndrome, gout, and asthma.

COSTS

Having the risk factors for metabolic syndrome raises the cost for the patient’s care.  It is estimated the cost is about twice as high on average when there is a risk factor for diabetes in people that have metabolic syndrome.

DIAGNOSING

Here is the fun part; there are no well-accepted criteria for diagnosing metabolic syndrome. The criteria proposed by The National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults (Adult Treatment Panel III) are the most current used criteria.

One of the markers is central obesity which means a waist circumference for men of at least 40 inches or more, and women a waste of 35 inches or more. The HDL which is considered the good cholesterol has to be for men less than 40, and for women less than 50, Then you need to have a fasting glucose 100 or higher, and blood pressure 130/85 or greater.

Here is the problem and where the costs are, these patients are routinely checked for weight, waist circumference, blood glucose, lipoproteins, and blood pressure. The guidelines are to treat risk factors such as cholesterol, hypertension and high glucose levels. Also, according to the guidelines the physician has to choose anti-hypertensive drugs carefully because different agents have different effects on insulin sensitivity.

The American Heart Association states it needs more studies to understand the relationship between metabolic risk factors and the efficacy of drug therapy in people who have the metabolic syndrome. It is also stated that the safest and most effective treatment is to lose weight and increase activity levels.

GUIDLINES

Metabolic syndrome is a troubling diagnosis for a number of reasons. The guiding numbers keep changing, what was a normal reading for glucose, now is a danger sign. Blood pressure readings, and cholesterol levels guidelines keep dropping; again what was once normal is now pre-disaster. Next we will be going for the pre, pre-diabetic. This is where a fasting glucose reading of 85 or over, puts you on a watch list for a possible tendency to having full blown diabetes. It also helps if you can name a family member that had or has the condition.

LARGE PROBLEM

Medicine looks and expects to find the boogie-man every where. You do not have to be in the medical profession to see we have a large scale problem. Our eyes are not deceiving us; we are an overweight nation, getting larger by the day. Common sense seems to be missing, metabolic syndrome, is a new disorder according to the medical profession. Obesity is a disease of the mouth, which does need to be addressed, not by pills, fad diets, or by drawing a food pyramid.

NUTRITIONAL ANSWERS

The only methods that work are the ones that address your nutritional needs. Weight control without regard for your personal nutritional needs, may help you temporarily lose a few pounds. It is a method that will fail in the long term.

With all kinds of food stuffs on the shelves that have never been consumed on a regular basis before, we are now in uncharted territory. To be able to loss weight and stay healthy is going to be a challenge, which will become more complex over time. Our individual nutritional needs are not a multi-vitamin away.

Obesity is tied to heart failure. Specialists at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere report evidence linking severe overweight to prolonged inflammation of heart tissue and the subsequent damage that lead to failure of the body’s blood-pumping organ. The latest findings from the Multi-ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (Mesa) to be published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, says the estimated 72 million obese Americans should be concerned over these findings.

The biological effects of obesity on the heart were found to be profound said senior investigator Joao Lima, M.D. Even if obese people feel healthy there are measurable chemical signs of damage to their heart, which go beyond diabetes and high blood pressure. Researchers conducted the tests, and tracked the development of heart failure in an ethnically diverse group of about 7,000 men and women, ages 45 to 84, which were enrolled in the MESA study.

The researchers from five universities across the United States also found alarming links between inflammation and metabolic syndrome. This condition produces the risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, elevated blood glucose levels, excess abdominal fat, abnormal cholesterol levels, and obesity. This also doubles a person’s chances of developing heart failure.

Again it is inflammation chemicals in the obese participants that seemed to be a key predictor of heart failure. A tripling of average levels of C-reactive protein in study participants increased the chance of heart failure by 36 percent. One-fifth higher than average blood levels of fibrinogen, best known for its role in blood clotting, but also a major player in muscle scarring, upped the risk of heart failure by 37 percent.

 “What this tells us is that both obesity and the inflammatory markers are closely tied to each other and to heart failure,” says lead researcher Hossein Bahrami, M.D., M.P.H

Bahrami, a senior cardiology research fellow at Hopkins, says “the basic evidence is building the case that inflammation may be the chemical route by which obesity targets the heart, and that inflammation may play an important role in the increased risk of heart failure in obese people, especially those with the metabolic syndrome.”

He also notes that previous studies, done at Hopkins, show that even moderate exercise to lose abdominal fat dramatically offsets the harmful effects of metabolic syndrome on heart function.

Obesity is tied to heart failure. However, we may not need all these studies telling us that. All we need to know is that we can’t be obese and remain healthy. Concise information is informative, but is it a powerful enough tool to reverse the trend. What we allocate to these studies may not give us the currency to specifically reduce the incident of heart failure, or any other chronic condition.

The reason is heart failure is a nutrient deficiency as are many of the chronic conditions. Americans for the most part are overfed and under nourished. Without an optimal diet to operate on, all the studies in the world are not going to be as helpful as we would like. Being obese is of course a burden on any individual as it leads also to being out of condition. A connection to obesity and any number of diseases is easy to make.

What are needed are the tools that specifically help with the nutritional solutions, and lower the risk of inflammation. We eat a diet that causes inflammation throughout the body. Our Omega 6 intake is too high, and does not come from healthy sources. The ratio of omega 3 to 6 should be anywhere from 1:3 and is currently as high as 1:25. Omega 3 fatty acids works as an anti-inflammatory. This information is not acknowledged in media reports. We need to know more than obesity is tied to heart failure.