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Metabolic Syndrome: The Root Cause of Chronic Disease
I wish I had a better metabolism. But someone else probably wishes they could walk into a room and make friends with everyone like I can. You always want what someone else has.
— KELLY CLARKSON
Let’s start with some basic terminology.
Metabolism is a broad term that refers to the sum total of an organism’s energy-producing and energy-utilizing reactions.
Glucose is the primary fuel in the body that is utilized by your brain, heart, kidneys, muscles, liver, and all the vital organs. The goal is to have lots of energy by having the right amount of the right kind of fuel available at the right time. Glucose is the only fuel that red blood cells can use and is the preferred brain fuel under most conditions. Muscles are the largest glucose-burning tissue in the body. The amazing thing is that the entire bloodstream can only hold three to four teaspoons of glucose at a time. This means that blood-glucose levels need to be tightly regulated at all times.
Insulin acts as the fuel injector that pushes glucose to the vital tissues for use as fuel. The problem with insulin is that when it is too high for too long, it makes us voraciously hungry and shuts down fat burning.
All carbohydrates eventually break down into glucose, which is the simplest form of fuel. Sucrose is table sugar, fructose is fruit sugar, lactose is milk sugar, and the list goes on. You are hardwired to seek out sugar because it provides energy. The goal is to find ways to provide this energy from healthy fuel sources, the way nature intended. In nature, sugar comes prepackaged with fiber and water to provide a steady flow of fuel to the cells in the body. We interfere with this system at our peril.
Metabolic imbalances and diseases arise when there is a problem with fuel availability and utilization. This condition can be analogized to your car engine being flooded and then sputtering and producing soot and smog because fuel cannot be properly delivered and converted into energy.
So, metabolic disease is an energy-delivery problem at its core. To use another analogy, it’s like having plenty of money in the bank but still being broke because your accounts are “frozen” or you are locked out for not having the right password.
Turbo Metabolism
Turbo Metabolism means having a properly functioning energy-delivery system, so that fuel is delivered and utilized optimally, providing plenty of energy for fueling a vibrant life. The result is a long and energetic life free of the chronic diseases that plague modern urban society.
The underlying cause of much metabolic disease is metabolic syndrome — the name for a group of risk factors that triples your risk for heart disease, increases fivefold your risk for diabetes, and causes many other health problems, including stroke, liver damage, cancers, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, and even chronic pain.1 (Risk factors are traits, conditions, or habits that increase your chances of developing a disease.)
In obesity, the storage capacity of fat (adipose) tissue can be exceeded. When this happens, the excess fat accumulates in other tissues, which can cause them to malfunction. When the pancreas, muscles, liver, and cells lining the blood vessels are saturated with fat, metabolic syndrome may result (see figure 1.1).2
Figure 1.1. The process by which caloric excess and obesity lead to belly fat and metabolic syndrome
A telltale sign of metabolic syndrome is belly fat: the ugly fat cells that engulf our vital organs and surround the loops of our intestines. This is not the fat under the skin that can be sucked out during liposuction. It is internal, and the only way to get rid of it is by adopting the Turbo Metabolism lifestyle. Belly fat is very evident in people with a “beer belly” and is the source of all metabolic diseases.
The proliferation of this “hungry fat” makes us crave even more of the wrong foods. Think about it: You don’t become overweight because you are hungry; you actually feel hungry because of this greedy belly fat, which keeps capturing and trapping energy, leaving you even hungrier! Thus, belly fat is the enemy of Turbo Metabolism: The more belly fat you accumulate, the hungrier (and fatter) you get!
Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes
Diabetes is a group of diseases characterized by high blood-glucose levels that result from defects in the body’s ability to produce and/or use insulin. Insulin is a master chemical (hormone) produced by the pancreas, and it is responsible for moving glucose from the bloodstream to the organs where it is used for energy — principally the muscles, the heart, the brain, and the liver.
Symptoms of diabetes include increasing thirst and hunger, along with fatigue and blurry vision. Fatigue is a hallmark symptom because of the inability of glucose to be delivered to the cells to be used for energy. Diabetes is diagnosed by a fasting blood-glucose level of greater than 126 mg/dL (on two separate tests) or a blood-glucose level greater than 200 mg/dL at any time.
Type 1 diabetes, which accounts for only 10 percent of diabetes cases, is caused by a deficiency of insulin production by the beta cells of the pancreas. That is, type 1 diabetics lack insulin, and they tend to be very thin and have a hard time gaining weight. Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90 percent of all diabetes cases. It is caused by insulin resistance — the body produces sufficient insulin, but the insulin is unable to work properly. The result is higher-than-normal levels of blood glucose because the glucose is unable to be processed by the cells and used for energy, so it remains in the bloodstream. When we measure insulin levels in type 2 diabetics, we find their insulin levels are actually very high, meaning that the body is compensating for insulin resistance by producing even more insulin! One of the big problems with chronically elevated insulin levels is that they cause constant hunger, and fat cannot be used as a fuel as long as insulin levels are elevated. As a result, type 2 diabetics tend to be heavy. The goal of Turbo Metabolism is to improve insulin sensitivity so that these soaring insulin levels can drop down to normal.
Heart disease, cancer, lung disease, stroke, and diabetes are the leading killers of our time and account for two-thirds of all deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the percentages of total deaths by the seven leading causes are as follows:
1. Heart disease: 24.1 percent
2. Cancer: 22.7 percent
3. Chronic lower-respiratory diseases: 5.9 percent
4. Accidents (unintentional injuries): 5.6 percent
5. Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 5.3 percent
6. Alzheimer’s disease: 4.9 percent
7. Diabetes: 3.0 percent3
If you are a nonsmoker over the age of forty, you can further narrow down the causes of death and disability to heart disease, strokes, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. These are all characterized by impaired metabolism (problematic energy delivery) at their core.
If you really think about it, the actual causes of death underlying these diseases can be boiled down to a handful of largely preventable lifestyle choices, such as tobacco use, poor diet, and physical inactivity, all translating to impaired energy transactions in the body (impaired metabolism). Many of these lifestyle choices or behaviors stem from unmanaged stress, lack of social support, and poor sleeping habits.
In fact, the manifestation of a disease such as diabetes is simply the tip of the iceberg. Many decades before disease becomes evident, sinister “conspiracies” are brewing. Insulin receptors are becoming blocked and inflammatory chemicals are poisoning our vital organs and metabolic processes as a result of our behavior and choices. Essentially, we are gradually overwhelming the balance of nature. Using our