Are you fat? Are you overweight or obese? Are you pre-diabetic? Or perhaps do you even already have high blood sugar to be diagnosed a DIABETIC? What is Metabolic Syndrome? Do you have it? If so, should you be worried about it? Well, for the simple fact that metabolic syndrome is the number 1 killer in the world today, I insist at the very least that you should GET TO KNOW more about it! That is, if you want to live a longer and healthier life. Let’s find the answers to those questions in this blog.
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO): THE TOP 10 CAUSES OF DEATH (2019)
In this article as of 2019, based on WHO Global Health Estimates, the World Health Organization listed down the Top 10 causes of death accounting for 55% of all deaths worldwide for that year. There were 3 overall categories of death causes: communicable (which included infectious and parasitic diseases), noncommunicable and injuries.
In my own honest opinion, here’s the most important thing to note. Globally, 7 out of the top 10 were noncommunicable diseases. Of these, ischemic heart disease (or heart attack) is the world’s # 1 killer! It accounted for 16% of all deaths. It has the largest increase in deaths since the Year 2000, rising by more than 2M to 8.9M deaths in 2019.
Trailing closely in 2nd place is stroke! They may either be due to a block in a carotid or intracerebral blood vessel due to atherosclerosis, or due to an intracranial hemorrhage most often due to high blood pressure or hypertension. Stroke was responsible for about 11% of all deaths. As a neurologist, stroke is among the diseases we most commonly see in our day to day clinical practice.
Diabetes is now at top 9. This followed after a 70% increase in cases since year 2000.
From its previous place at #13, kidney diseases is now at top 10 accounting for 1.3M deaths in 2019. What’s with these kidney diseases? Most of them are complications due to kidney damage from diabetes and hypertension!
THE COMMON THREAD: INSULIN RESISTANCE/METABOLIC SYNDROME
So what IS COMMON with all these? Aren’t physicians worldwide seeing the pattern? All those noncommunicable diseases I’ve mentioned are complications due to Insulin Resistance, otherwise known as the Metabolic Syndrome!
Two more things I haven’t mentioned, but I think are worth mentioning: Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, as well as cancers. WHO have also listed them down in the TOP 10 causes of death.
There have been several studies already citing how dementia is linked to brain insulin resistance - in fact we now have the term “type 3 diabetes” for that!
As for cancers, are you already aware of the Warburg effect?
Let’s refresh our knowledge a little bit. The Warburg effect, also known as aerobic glycolysis, is a phenomenon in which cancer cells exhibit increased glucose metabolism and lactate production, even in the presence of oxygen. In other words, many cancer cells prefer fueling its needs with sugar or glucose! This includes breast CA, lung CA, colorectal CA and many others! In the brain, glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive type of brain tumor, is known to display the Warburg effect.
Take note of this, as WHO says:
“It is important to know why people die to improve how people live. Measuring how many people die each year helps to assess the effectiveness of our health systems and direct resources to where they are needed most.” - World Health Organization
Isn’t that really interesting? Of course, the main question we need to ask is this - if most of the top 10 causes of deaths worldwide are complications related to the Metabolic Syndrome, what should we do about it?
METABOLIC SYNDROME: AN OVERVIEW
So what again is Metabolic Syndrome? Let’s go through a brief review.
Metabolic Syndrome is diagnosed if you have any three or more of the following five criteria from the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the American Heart Association:
1. ABDOMINAL OBESITY/ADIPOSITY
2. HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE
3. HIGH TRIGLYCERIDES
4. HIGH BLOOD SUGAR
5. LOW HDL
For the waist circumference and the HDL levels, it differs for men and women. For Asians, there is also a different recommended set of cutoff values for waist circumference based on the International Diabetes Federation.
METABOLIC SYNDROME: THE ROOT CAUSE
Now we know what is the root cause behind Metabolic Syndrome - it is Insulin Resistance! What is causing Insulin Resistance? Of course, it’s frequent elevations of insulin (or what is called hyperinsulinemia) in our bloodstream! And what is causing hyperinsulinemia? Of course, it’s very much common sense - it’s very, very most often the carbohydrates in the food that we eat from day to day!
There have been many studies already about this - I refer you to my website learning resources page (https://www.lowcarbhealthmd.com/resources). I am constantly updating it.
It’s just that many physicians worldwide are not even aware of it because sadly, most of us depend on our learnings from the medical conferences and conventions we attend. And in these pharmaceutical-industry sponsored meetings, all these landmark studies in low carbohydrate nutrition are almost NEVER ever heard of. Why? These studies are almost never presented in any platform for one very simple reason - not one pharmaceutical company will sponsor them because they will not earn anything from it. In fact, they will stand the risk of losing their billions of dollars of sales from cardiometabolic prescription drugs mostly for diabetes and hypertension even at the mere mention of the fact that - YES, METABOLIC SYNDROME AND ITS MANIFESTATIONS CAN BE REVERSED WITH A STRICT LOW CARBOHYDRATE DIET!
And together with all other low carb medical practitioners out there, we can all attest that we have many, many patients whose medications for hypertension, diabetes and other metabolic syndrome related symptoms we all have successfully decreased, or perhaps even STOPPED or DEPRESCRIBED all because of one simple thing - the patient successfully complied with a low carbohydrate regimen.
METABOLIC SYNDROME: CAN WE REVERSE IT?
So what can we do to reverse Metabolic Syndrome?
If you are a long-standing diabetic and your Metabolic Syndrome or insulin resistance has already been there for quite sometime, and you are already taking a lot of medications - then reversing your Metabolic Syndrome may not be as very easy. But for the greatest majority whose metabolic health issues are not yet that complicated, or are still early on in their Metabolic Syndrome journey - such as those who are still pre-diabetic and don’t have irreversible kidney damage, then reversing your Metabolic Syndrome condition should be your topmost priority. Because of you don’t, as sure as the sun rises in the mornings and sets in the afternoons, I’m telling you this: you will definitely have greater and greater chances of suffering from heart attack, stroke and other life-threatening diabetes complications.
So IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BECOME ONE OF THE World Health Organization’s DEATH STATISTICS DUE TO METABOLIC SYNDROME - which IMHO is the WORLD’S # 1 KILLER today - and IF YOU HAVE PLANS of hopefully living a longer and healthier life ahead, then this is perhaps my best advise to you so far: learn more about Low Carb nutrition and how it can address your METABOLIC SYNDROME.
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