Metabolic Syndrome Quotes

The simplest way to look at all these associations, between obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cancer, and Alzheimer's (not to mention the other the conditions that also associate with obesity and diabetes, such as gout, asthma, and fatty liver disease), is that what makes us fat - the quality and quantity of carbohydrates we consume - also makes us sick.

Because consistently high insulin levels are the root cause of all the diseases of metabolic syndrome, it’s especially important for those with metabolic syndrome to consider how foods stimulate the release of insulin.

Metabolic syndrome, of which obesity and type 2 diabetes are a key part, are ultimately caused by—you guessed it—too much sugar.

The resistance of the medical profession to dietary carbohydrate restriction in the treatment of metabolic syndrome and, more important, to its most obvious risk, diabetes, I find incomprehensible.

Scientists generally agree that the more HDL you have, the lower your risk for heart disease. As you might have imagined, people with Metabolic Syndrome and type 2 diabetes also typically have low levels of beneficial HDL. Exercise is one of the cheapest, easiest, and most effective ways to raise HDL. Consuming saturated fat is another!

The three rules for getting control of your diet. Rule 1. If you’re OK, you’re OK. Rule 2. If you want to lose weight: Don’t eat. If you have to eat, don’t eat carbs. If you have to eat carbs, eat low-glycemic index carbs. Rule 3. If you have diabetes or metabolic syndrome, carbohydrate restriction is the “default” approach, that is, the one to try first.

Today we call this cluster of problems “metabolic syndrome” (or MetSyn), and it is defined in terms of the following five criteria: high blood pressure (>130/85) high triglycerides (>150 mg/dL) low HDL cholesterol (<40 mg/dL in men or <50 mg/dL in women) central adiposity (waist circumference >40 inches in men or >35 in women) elevated fasting glucose (>110 mg/dL)

Studies have found that approximately one-third of those folks who are obese by BMI are actually metabolically healthy, by many of the same parameters used to define the metabolic syndrome (blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterol, and fasting glucose, among others). At the same time, some studies have found that between 20 and 40 percent of nonobese adults may be metabolically unhealthy, by those same measures

Individual fat-storage capacity seems to be influenced by genetic factors. This is a generalization, but people of Asian descent (for example), tend to have much lower capacity to store fat, on average, than Caucasians. There are other factors at play here as well, but this explains in part why some people can be obese but metabolically healthy, while others can appear “skinny” while still walking around with three or more markers of metabolic syndrome. It’s these people who are most at risk, according to research by Mitch Lazar at the University of Pennsylvania, because a “thin” person may simply have a much lower capacity to safely store fat.

that drinking diet soda was associated with a 43 percent increase in risk of vascular events (strokes and heart attacks). The 2008 Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study (ARIC)10 found a 34 percent increased incidence of metabolic syndrome in diet soda users, which is consistent with data from the 2007 Framingham Heart Study,11 which showed a 50 percent higher incidence of metabolic syndrome. In 2014, Dr. Ankur Vyas from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics 12 presented a study following 59,614 women over 8.7 years in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. The study found a 30 percent increase risk of cardiovascular events (heart attacks and

Triglyceride-to-HDL Ratio After assessing each of these five biomarkers, there is one more step: calculate your triglyceride-to-HDL ratio to better understand insulin sensitivity. Simply divide your triglycerides by your HDL. Interestingly, studies have shown that this value correlates well with underlying insulin resistance. So even if you are unable to access a fasting insulin test, the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio can give you a general sense of where you’re at. According to Dr. Mark Hyman, “the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is the best way to check for insulin resistance other than the insulin response test. According to a paper published in Circulation, the most powerful test to predict your risk of a heart attack is the ratio of your triglycerides to HDL. If the ratio is high, your risk for a heart attack increases sixteen-fold—or 1,600 percent! This is because triglycerides go up and HDL (or ‘good cholesterol’) goes down with diabesity.” Dr. Robert Lustig agrees: “The triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is the best biomarker of cardiovascular disease and the best surrogate marker of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.” In children, higher triglyceride-to-HDL is significantly correlated with mean insulin, waist circumferences, and insulin resistance. In adults, the ratio has shown a positive association with insulin resistance across normal weight and overweight people and significantly tracks with insulin levels, insulin sensitivity, and prediabetes. Perplexingly, the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is not a metric used in standard clinical practice. If you remember one thing from this chapter, remember this: you need to know your insulin sensitivity. It can give you lifesaving clues about early dysfunction and Bad Energy brewing in your body, and is best assessed by a fasting insulin test, discussed below. Right now, this is not a standard test offered to you at your annual physical. I implore you to find a way to get a fasting insulin test or to calculate your triglyceride-to-HDL ratio every year. Do this for your children, as well. And take the steps outlined in the following chapters to ensure it does not start creeping up. RANGES: Range considered “normal” by standard criteria: none specified in standard criteria Optimal range: Anything above a ratio of 3 is strongly suggestive of insulin resistance. You want to shoot for less than 1.5, although lower is better. I recommend aiming for less than 1.

Over time, the active verbs of the Shema-recite, walk, talk, lie down, rise, bind, fix, write, all in the service of love-become too much for us to imagine, let alone perform. Our search for superpowers has created many of the most pressing problems of our time. The defining mental activity of our time is scrolling Our capacities of attention, memory, and concentration are diminishing; to compensate, we toggle back and forth between infinite feeds of news, posts, images, episodes - taking shallow hits of trivia, humor, and outrage to make up for the depths of learning, joy, and genuine lament that now feel beyond our reach. The defining illness of our time is metabolic syndrome, the chronic combination of high weight, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar that is the hallmark of an inactive life. Our strength is atrophying and our waistline expanding, and to compensate, we turn to the superpowers of the supermarket with the aisles of salt and fat convincing our bodies’ reward systems, one bite at a time, that we have never been better in our life. The defining emotional challenge of our time is anxiety, the fear of what might be instead of the courageous pursuit of what could be. Once, we lived with allness of heart, with a boldness of quest that was too in love with the good to call off the pursuit when we encountered risk. Now we live as voyeurs, pursuing shadowy vestiges of what we desire from behind the one-way mirror of a screen, invulnerable but alone. And, of course, the soul is the plane of human ex- istence that our technological age neglects most of all. Jesus asked whether it was worth gaining the whole world at the cost of losing one's soul. But in the era of superpowers, we have not only lost a great deal of our souls-we have lost much of the world as well. We are rarely overwhelmed by wind or rain or snow. We rarely see, let alone name, the stars. We have lost the sense that we are both at home and on a pilgrimage in the vast, mysterious cosmos, anchored in a rich reality beyond ourselves. We have lost our souls without even gaining the world. So it is no wonder that the defining condition of our time is a sense of loneliness and alienation. For if human flourishing requires us to love with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, what happens When nothing in our lives develops those capacities? With what, exactly, will we love?

It is important for Americans to recognize that, despite all of the fancy gimmicks and perceived power of modern medicine, the largest explosion of preventable, chronic diseases ever in the history of mankind has occurred as a direct result of modern medicine and scientific reductionism. Modern medicine is not an antidote for the incredible harms caused by the modern food industry, but it is an effective distraction.

We know now that fructose is a chronic hepatotoxin, just like alcohol. However, because fructose does not get partially metabolized by the brain like alcohol, we do not get any of the instant effects acute alcohol consumption brings. In everything else, both substances are the same. But this lack of acute toxicity is exactly why the FDA and the USDA won’t regulate it—in addition to the economic hit American producers would take if it were announced that fructose is a toxin that leads to metabolic syndrome and its host of disorders.

Americans are consuming a diet that is at least half sugars in one form or another—calories providing virtually nothing but energy. The energy density of these refined carbohydrates contributes to obesity in two ways. First, we consume many more calories per unit of food; the fiber that’s been removed from these foods is precisely what would have made us feel full and stop eating. Also, the flash flood of glucose causes insulin levels to spike and then, once the cells have taken all that glucose out of circulation, drop precipitously, making us think we need to eat again. While the widespread acceleration of the Western diet has given us the instant gratification of sugar, in many people—especially those newly exposed to it—the speediness of this food overwhelms the ability of insulin to process it, leading to type 2 diabetes and all the other chronic diseases associated with metabolic syndrome.

Does being “thin” ensure optimal “health”? No. It’s now well accepted that many lean individuals have the condition known as metabolic syndrome, which is a step along the progression from health to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and possibly Alzheimer’s disease as well. The likely scenario is that these individuals, despite being lean, have what’s called visceral fat—fat around the organs, and particularly the liver—and that this is exacerbating or causing the metabolic syndrome. The argument I’m making is that this visceral fat, too, is caused by the quality and quantity of the carbohydrates in the diet.   8.

The most important and most easily measured would be waist circumference. But other factors include small, dense LDL (or a high apoB or LDL particle number), high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high fasting glucose. If your triglycerides are elevated and your HDL is low, that’s a very good sign you have metabolic syndrome and should address it by restricting the carbohydrates and particularly the sugars in the diet. 12.

Kettlebell swings attack metabolic syndrome head on. First, they build muscle and reduce fat, both keys to the disorder. Fat build up, especially in the abdominal area, can be halted and reversed with kettlebell swings (and the other recommendations in this book). The muscles the swings produce help use up glucose and insulin, both toxic when levels are too high in the blood.

Having type 2 diabetes raises a person’s risk of dying, in some cases to a small degree, in other cases substantially, but it is treatable using drugs, diet, and exercise. Although drugs help, they aren’t always necessary. Diet and exercise can sometimes allow the body to heal itself. In one dramatic test of this concept, ten overweight Australian aborigines with type 2 diabetes reversed their disease after just seven weeks of returning to an active hunting and gathering lifestyle.20 The mechanisms by which physical activity helps prevent and treat type 2 diabetes are well studied. Most basically, exercise (in conjunction with diet) can ameliorate every characteristic of metabolic syndrome including excess organ fat, high blood pressure, and high levels of blood sugar, fat, and cholesterol. In addition, exercise lowers inflammation and counteracts many of the damaging effects of stress. And most remarkably, exercise can reverse insulin resistance by restoring blocked insulin receptors and causing muscle cells to produce more of the transporter molecules that shuttle sugar out of the bloodstream.21 The effect is akin to unclogging a drain and flushing out the pipes. Altogether, by simultaneously improving the delivery, transport, and use of blood sugar, exercise can resuscitate a once resistant muscle cell to suck up as much as fiftyfold more molecules of blood sugar. No drug is so potent.

To explore how physical activity helps but doesn’t entirely prevent cardiovascular diseases, let’s return to the trinity of intertwined factors that are the root causes of the problem: high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and inflammation. Cholesterol. A cholesterol test usually measures the levels of three molecules in your blood. The first is low-density lipoprotein (LDL), often termed bad cholesterol. Your liver produces these balloon-like molecules to transport fats and cholesterol throughout your bloodstream, but some LDLs have a harmful tendency to burrow into the walls of arteries, especially when blood pressure is high. These intrusions cause an inflammatory reaction that generates plaques. The second type of cholesterol is high-density lipoprotein (HDL), sometimes called good cholesterol, because these molecules scavenge and return LDLs back to the liver. The third type are triglycerides, fat molecules that are floating freely in the bloodstream and a signpost for metabolic syndrome. To make a long story short, diets rich in sugar and saturated fats contribute to cardiovascular disease because they promote high levels of plaque-forming LDLs. Conversely, physical activity helps prevent cardiovascular disease by lowering triglycerides, raising HDL levels, and to a lesser degree lowering LDL. Blood pressure. A blood pressure test gives you two readings: the higher (systolic) number is the pressure your heart’s main chamber overcomes when it squeezes blood throughout your body; the lower (diastolic) number is the pressure your heart experiences as its main chamber fills with blood. By convention high blood pressure is a reading greater than 130/90 or 140/90. Blood pressures above these values are concerning because, unabated, they damage the walls of arteries, making them vulnerable to invasion by plaque-inducing LDLs. As we already saw, once plaques start to form, blood pressure can rise, potentially stimulating yet more plaques. Chronically high blood pressure also strains the heart, causing it to thicken abnormally and weaken. By forcing more blood to flow more rapidly through arteries, physical activity stimulates the generation of new arteries throughout the body and helps keep existing arteries supple, protecting against high blood pressure. Inflammation. Plaques don’t form out of the blue but instead occur when white blood cells in the bloodstream react to the inflammation caused by LDLs and high blood pressure. Chronic inflammation also increases one’s likelihood of developing plaques from high cholesterol and blood pressure.40 And, as we have previously seen, while inflammation is caused by factors such as obesity, junky diets, excess alcohol, and smoking, it is substantially lowered by physical activity.

Make a list of some of the things that can go wrong from the last two chapters: elevated insulin levels in the blood. Elevated glucose levels. Elevated systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Insulin resistance. Too much LDL-cholesterol. Too little HDL. Too much fat or cholesterol in the blood. Suffer from a subset of these, and you’ve got Metabolic syndrome (the formal diagnosis involves “one or more” from a list of some of these problems, and “two or more” from a list of the others).

He observed that when we build rockets we put over 10,000 sensors on them to understand the functioning of all parts of the spacecraft and to enable prediction of mechanical dysfunction and systems failure before it happens... Yet with human health, we adhere to an opposite paradigm. We wait for the human body to develop fulminant systems failure, which shows up as symptoms and meeting diagnostic thresholds for disease-specific biomarkers.

The incentives of our medical and food systems pressure patients to not ask questions. These incentives also lead to the biggest lie in healthcare. That the reasons we are getting sicker, fatter, more depressed, and more infertile are complicated. The reasons are not complicated. They all tie to good energy habits.

Dark chocolate (chocolate with 70 percent or higher cocoa content) is recommended. One ounce (30 grams) provides between 30 mg and 40 mg of epicatechin, which is the active ingredient in chocolate that has protective effects against metabolic syndrome.

syndrome. Metabolic syndrome means cells are struggling to get their jobs done because of problems in their energy production system. Metabolic syndrome is clinically defined as having three or more of the following traits: Fasting glucose of 100 mg/dL or higher A waistline of more than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men HDL cholesterol less than 40 mg/dL for men and 50 mg/dL for women Triglycerides of 150 mg/dL or higher Blood pressure of 130/85 mmHg or higher The reason you want to know whether your markers have tipped into suboptimal states is that it gives you a surefire clue that the Bad Energy processes are happening inside the cells.

Real food, containing endogenous micronutrients, prevents metabolic syndrome. Processed food causes metabolic syndrome.

Maybe you took antibiotics for acne as a kid, or perhaps you take ibuprofen for a nagging injury. Quite feasibly, stress has been your constant companion. Or maybe you like to golf and have been exposed to endocrine-disrupting pesticides on the golf course. These small insults add up to create leaky gut. This syndrome makes food particles, such as the proteins in dairy, trigger an alarm in the immune system of your gut.

If we look at a map of the world today, one of the striking observations is that illnesses like Crohn’s disease are common in more developed countries and rare in less developed ones. The hygiene hypothesis accounts for this uneven distribution by suggesting that less childhood exposure to bacteria and parasites in affluent societies like the United States and Europe actually increases susceptibility to disease by suppressing the natural development of the immune system. This concept has also been linked to the rise of many of our chronic ailments: the obesity epidemic, deadly disorders like metabolic syndrome and heart disease, psychiatric conditions like depression, poorly understood afflictions like autism, and even some forms of cancer—and clinical studies have shown significant disturbances in the microbiome in all of them. We spend huge amounts of time making sure we’re clean—scrubbing ourselves with harsh soaps, sanitizing our hands and environment with chemicals, and eliminating any trace of dirt from our homes and lives—but since the evidence suggests that germs may actually be essential for our well-being, it may be time to rethink our approach to cleanliness and hygiene.

Prospective data indicates that the CRP is a better predictor of cardiovascular risk than a low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the standby predictor of cardiovascular disease. The CRP advantage is that “inflammation,” (but not the elevated LDL) is associated with the components of the metabolic syndrome. CRP levels are not only demonstrated with “inflammation” of cardiovascular disease, but also with triglycerides, obesity, elevated blood pressure, and elevated fasting blood glucose. In addition, CRP also correlates with endothelial dysfunction, impaired fibrinolysis, and most importantly, insulin resistance, which is hyperinsulinemia, type 2 diabetes. I ask you, the reader, to please note that the clinical conditions associated with CRP, especially its application for cardiovascular disease, is the pathology of insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, type 2 diabetes. Please see Chapter 14, Pathology of Type 2 Diabetes.

The most important and most easily measured would be waist circumference. But other factors include small, dense LDL (or a high apoB or LDL particle number), high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high fasting glucose. If your triglycerides are elevated and your HDL is low, that’s a very good sign you have metabolic syndrome and should address it by restricting the carbohydrates and particularly the sugars in the diet.

Diabetes is actually a group of diseases, all of which are characterized by the inability to produce enough insulin. Type 1 diabetes, which mostly develops in children, occurs when the immune system destroys cells in the pancreas that make insulin. Gestational diabetes arises occasionally during pregnancy when a mother’s pancreas produces too little insulin, giving both her and the fetus a dangerous, prolonged sugar rush. My grandmother had the third and most common form of the disease, type 2 diabetes (also called adult onset diabetes or diabetes mellitus type 2), which is the focus of this discussion because it is a formerly rare mismatch disease associated with metabolic syndrome that is now one of the fastest growing diseases in the world. Between

EXPERTS’ TOP TEN Mark Houston, M.D., M.S., F.A.C.P. Mark Houston is my go-to guy for anything at all to do with hypertension and/or metabolic syndrome.

Milk-alkali syndrome, acid rebound, hypercalcemia, and metabolic alkalosis are known complications associated with the various antacids;

carbohydrates might be responsible for causing or exacerbating either metabolic syndrome or the combination of low HDL, high triglycerides, and small, dense LDL, which is described as occurring “commonly in persons with premature [coronary heart disease].

WHEN IT COMES TO THE CAUSE of chronic disease, as we discussed earlier, the carbohydrate hypothesis rests upon two simple propositions. First, if our likelihood of contracting a particular disease increases once we already have Type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome, then it’s a reasonable assumption that high blood sugar and/or insulin is involved in the disease process. Second, if blood sugar and insulin are involved, then we have to accept the possibility that refined and easily digestible carbohydrates are as well.

Research has shown that people with Metabolic Syndrome or type 2 diabetes all have elevated levels of both triglycerides and these small, dense LDL particles. Of course, these same people have substantially increased risks for heart disease and stroke.

The “active couch potato syndrome” is an actual observed scientific phenomenon whereby devoted fitness enthusiasts—who conduct daily workouts but live otherwise inactivity-dominant lifestyles—are not immune to the cellular dysfunction and metabolic disease patterns driven by inactivity. Statistics referenced by James Levine, MD, PhD, a Mayo Clinic researcher, international expert on obesity, and author of Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It,

when something is ever present, you stop responding to it. This insulin resistance contributes not only to type 2 diabetes, fatty liver, and metabolic syndrome, but also to Alzheimer’s disease.

it is clear that there are stages before frank Type 2 diabetes is diagnosed, where serious damage is already being done. Various researchers have found that those with the metabolic syndrome have nearly the same risk of CVD as people with diabetes.

When you look in a teenager’s eyes who complains of a headache, and see their retinas are detaching due to increased intracranial pressure from severe metabolic syndrome, you know kids are the canaries in the coal mine. For Medicare and Social Security to work, young, healthy working taxpayers have to pay into the system, from which they’ll benefit in their later years. But those healthy taxpayers are getting sicker, are on disability, and, instead of paying in, they’re mostly taking out. The Social Security gap must be bridged by debt—leaving a poison-pill inheritance for subsequent generations, our children and grandchildren. Currently, the Office of Management and Budget predicts a complete Social Security collapse by 2035.

In nature, metabolic syndrome is an insurance plan. For humans today, metabolic syndrome is a disorder, a harbinger presaging the development of diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. What was meant to aid survival is now causing disease. Metabolic syndrome represents both nature’s success and its failure.

Metabolic syndrome is clinically defined as having three or more of the following traits: Fasting glucose of 100 mg/dL or higher A waistline of more than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men HDL cholesterol less than 40 mg/dL for men and 50 mg/dL for women Triglycerides of 150 mg/dL or higher Blood pressure of 130/85 mmHg or higher

Myoclonic seizures are brief shock-like jerks of a muscle or group of muscles. They occur in a variety of epilepsy syndromes that have different characteristics. Epilepsy can experience myoclonus in hiccups or in a sudden jerk that may wake you up as you’re just falling asleep. Myoclonus refers to a quick, involuntary muscle jerk. Myoclonus may occur because of a nervous system (neurological) disorder, such as epilepsy, a metabolic condition, or a reaction to a medication. Myoclonic epilepsy are caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain, which triggers the myoclonic muscle movements. The cause of myoclonus is corrected if possible. For example, drugs that can cause myoclonus are stopped. A high or low blood sugar level is corrected, and kidney failure is treated with hemodialysis. If the cause cannot be corrected, certain ant seizure drugs (such as valproate and levetiracetam) or clonazepam (a mild sedative) may lessen symptoms. Asian Neuro Centre is one of the largest and most experienced practices in Indore where the best & experienced neurologist is skilled in dozens of specialties, working to ensure quality care and successful recovery.

metabolic syndrome—which is a cluster of abnormalities, including weight gain and high blood pressure, which affects around half of middle-aged men and women in the U.S.—is linked to the carb content of the diet, not to the fat content. This syndrome is directly linked to diabetes and obesity.

I monitor several biomarkers related to metabolism, keeping a watchful eye for things like elevated uric acid, elevated homocysteine, chronic inflammation, and even mildly elevated ALT liver enzymes. Lipoproteins, which we will discuss in detail in the next chapter, are also important, especially triglycerides; I watch the ratio of triglycerides to HDL cholesterol (it should be less than 2:1 or better yet, less than 1:1), as well as levels of VLDL, a lipoprotein that carries triglycerides—all of which may show up many years before a patient would meet the textbook definition of metabolic syndrome. These biomarkers help give us a clearer picture of a patient’s overall metabolic health than HbA1c, which is not very specific by itself.

One reason I find value in the concept of metabolic syndrome is that it helps us see these disorders as part of a continuum and not a single, binary condition.

THE EIGHT GUIDING PRINCIPLES The eight guiding principles reveal how to detect and work with the energetic imbalances in the body. In fact, the principles consist of four polar opposites, which are as follows. INTERNAL/EXTERNAL Internal/external determines the location but not the cause of the problem. Internal organs are often affected by an emotional issue, and less frequently by an unknown cause or an external factor. External disorders are either caused by an outside-of-the-body pathogen that attacks suddenly or an acute or chronic invasion in the channel. External symptoms might involve the hair, muscles, and peripheral nerves and blood vessels, while internal systems involve the organs, deep vessels and nerves, brain, and spinal cord. HOT/COLD Hot/cold indicates the nature of the imbalance and the overall energy of the patient. Full heat or hot is excess heat in the interior. Excess heat is too much yang. Empty heat is deficient yin in the interior (usually caused by Kidney yin deficiency.) Full cold is excess cold in the interior. Excess cold comes from too much yin. Empty or deficient cold is a deficiency of yang. Hot and cold can coexist within the system. Cold symptoms might involve chills and pale skin, while hot symptoms could involve a raging fever and high metabolism. FULL/EMPTY Full/empty describes excess versus deficiency. It indicates the presence of a pathogen as well as the condition of the bodily chi. Full describes the presence of an internal or external pathogen or stagnated chi, blood, or food. Empty indicates no pathogen but weak chi, yin, yang, or blood. Mixed portrays the presence of a pathogen and weak chi, blood, yin, or yang. Full or excess symptoms often accompany a condition that is acute or sudden-onset, while empty or deficiency syndromes are more chronic and slow-moving.

THE EIGHT GUIDING PRINCIPLES The eight guiding principles reveal how to detect and work with the energetic imbalances in the body. In fact, the principles consist of four polar opposites, which are as follows. INTERNAL/EXTERNAL Internal/external determines the location but not the cause of the problem. Internal organs are often affected by an emotional issue, and less frequently by an unknown cause or an external factor. External disorders are either caused by an outside-of-the-body pathogen that attacks suddenly or an acute or chronic invasion in the channel. External symptoms might involve the hair, muscles, and peripheral nerves and blood vessels, while internal systems involve the organs, deep vessels and nerves, brain, and spinal cord. HOT/COLD Hot/cold indicates the nature of the imbalance and the overall energy of the patient. Full heat or hot is excess heat in the interior. Excess heat is too much yang. Empty heat is deficient yin in the interior (usually caused by Kidney yin deficiency.) Full cold is excess cold in the interior. Excess cold comes from too much yin. Empty or deficient cold is a deficiency of yang. Hot and cold can coexist within the system. Cold symptoms might involve chills and pale skin, while hot symptoms could involve a raging fever and high metabolism. FULL/EMPTY Full/empty describes excess versus deficiency. It indicates the presence of a pathogen as well as the condition of the bodily chi. Full describes the presence of an internal or external pathogen or stagnated chi, blood, or food. Empty indicates no pathogen but weak chi, yin, yang, or blood. Mixed portrays the presence of a pathogen and weak chi, blood, yin, or yang. Full or excess symptoms often accompany a condition that is acute or sudden-onset, while empty or deficiency syndromes are more chronic and slow-moving. CHI, BLOOD, AND FLUIDS: THE THREE UNIFYING INGREDIENTS THE FOUR LEVELS, six stages, and eight principles all revolve around the same three bodily ingredients: chi, blood, and non-blood bodily fluids. While a serious illness involves all three, many problems revolve around issues with one or another. These are the main conditions involving blood, chi, or the fluids. CHI CONDITIONS Deficient chi: Not enough chi to perform the necessary functions. Sinking or collapsed chi: The Spleen chi cannot perform its supportive functions. Stagnated chi: The chi flow is impaired. If congested or stuck in an organ, there can be pain, sluggishness, or stiffness. Rebellious chi: The chi flows in the wrong direction.

I monitor several biomarkers related to metabolism, keeping a watchful eye for things like elevated uric acid, elevated homocysteine, chronic inflammation, and even mildly elevated ALT liver enzymes. Lipoproteins, which we will discuss in detail in the next chapter, are also important, especially triglycerides; I watch the ratio of triglycerides to HDL cholesterol (it should be less than 2:1 or better yet, less than 1:1), as well as levels of VLDL, a lipoprotein that carries triglycerides—all of which may show up many years before a patient would meet the textbook definition of metabolic syndrome. These biomarkers help give us a clearer picture of a patient’s overall metabolic health than HbA1c, which is not

Again, the #1 risk factor for heart disease isn’t LDL-C; it’s the insulin resistance of metabolic syndrome, of which triglyceride is a much better biomarker than LDL-C. In fact, the largest study of heart attacks in the US revealed that 66 percent of the victims had metabolic syndrome. And the primary driver? Insulin resistance. And its primary driver? Our out-of-control sugar consumption.

Metabolic syndrome is not a specific disease itself, but the name for a group of risk factors (that tend to but do not have to occur together) that increase the risk of heart disease and other health problems, such as diabetes and stroke.

A person suffering from the metabolic syndrome is twice as likely to develop heart disease and five times as likely to develop diabetes.

Slow jogging not only prevents metabolic syndrome, but significantly increases the fitness level, thereby lowering mortality even in those already suffering from the syndrome.

They have to be capable of creating force. Subjects with low muscle strength were at double the risk of death, while those with low muscle mass and/or low muscle strength, plus metabolic syndrome, had a 3 to 3.33 times greater risk of all-cause mortality.

I watch the ratio of triglycerides to HDL cholesterol (it should be less than 2:1 or better yet, less than 1:1), as well as levels of VLDL, a lipoprotein that carries triglycerides—all of which may show up many years before a patient would meet the textbook definition of metabolic syndrome. These biomarkers help give us a clearer picture of a patient’s overall metabolic health than HbA1c, which is not very specific by itself. But the first thing I look for, the canary in the coal mine of metabolic disorder, is elevated insulin. As we’ve seen, the body’s first response to incipient insulin resistance is to produce more insulin.

of what exactly is good for the heart. Because Alzheimer’s researchers, like diabetologists, assume that Keys’s fat-cholesterol hypothesis is supported by compelling evidence, they will often suggest that cholesterol and saturated fat play a role in Alzheimer’s as well. But if coronary heart disease is mostly a product of the physiological abnormalities of metabolic syndrome, as the evidence suggests, then this implicates insulin, blood sugar, and refined carbohydrates instead, a conclusion supported by several lines of research that began to converge in the last decade.

The medical name for this condition is Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) and it describes a range of conditions in which the liver tests are abnormal in people who drink little or no alcohol. It ranges from a mild condition in which excess fat is deposited in the liver causing slightly abnormal liver tests to a more serious condition in which the fat in the liver leads to inflammation, scarring and cirrhosis, which is irreversible liver damage. NAFLD is very common and may be found in up to 1 in 5 adults. Of those with NAFLD, about 1 in 4 will develop the more serious form leading to cirrhosis. This is a very slow process and may progress over years to liver failure. It is related to obesity and as in the metabolic syndrome (see previous question) insulin resistance is the underlying cause. There

Other cases in which you need more autophagy are excessive body fat, high blood sugar levels, excessive inflammation, metabolic syndrome,

One such study tried giving people with metabolic syndrome placebo or actual garlic tablets adding up to a half teaspoon of garlic powder a day. And it worked, resulting in a drop in both weight and waistlines within six weeks.2285 A half teaspoon of garlic powder costs less than four cents. What about trying garlic supplements, like the fancy aged garlic extract ones you may have seen advertised. No weight-loss benefits were found.2286

You need a little bit of fat—even the saturated kind—to maintain normal anabolic hormone levels. When you eat pure carbs and no fat, this can also aggravate blood sugar problems in those who are susceptible, develop into metabolic syndrome, and eventually lead to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Eating healthy fat (and fiber) slows digestion, which helps control blood sugar and insulin more effectively. This makes fats especially important for people who are carb intolerant. Most surprising to many, eating nothing but nonfat, high-carb meals can sabotage your fat-loss goals by increasing hunger. After eating carbs without fiber or fat, your blood sugar peaks and quickly crashes, leaving you with that shaky, empty I-have-to-eat-now-or-I’m-going-to-pass-out feeling. It’s more than an emotional craving for a specific food; it’s physical hunger and it’s hard to resist. Cutting out all fat is not the answer. You need to eat fat.

talk a lot about a ketogenic diet in this book because of the miraculous health benefits it provides. This is a diet that helps shift your body’s metabolic engine from burning carbohydrates to burning fats. Interestingly, the cells of your body have the metabolic flexibility to adapt from using glucose for fuel to using ketones, which are a byproduct of breaking down fats. We will talk about this more in the cancer section of this book, but cancer cells do not have this metabolic flexibility to use fat as energy. They require glucose to thrive, which makes a ketogenic diet so effective for treating and preventing cancer.   A ketogenic diet calls for minimizing carbohydrates and replacing them with healthy fats and moderate amounts of high-quality protein. A ketogenic diet requires that roughly 50 to 70 percent of your food intake come from healthy fats, such as avocado, coconut oil, grass-fed butter, organic pasture raised eggs, and raw nuts. This diet will also help optimize your weight and prevent virtually all chronic degenerative diseases. Because you are minimizing carbs and replacing them with healthy fats, your body will shift from burning carbs as your primary fuel to burning fat.   Dr. Peter Attia, a Stanford University trained physician specializing in metabolic science, applied the ketogenic diet to his lifestyle to see what would happen. He essentially used himself as a lab rat and received incredible results. Although he was an active and fit guy, he always had a tendency toward metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions – increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels – that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. He decided to experiment with the ketogenic diet and see if it could improve his overall health status.

I also discovered I had Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, or PCOS, a hormonal condition that can affect metabolism, fertility, and other reproductive dynamics.

Fatigue treatment/energy enhancement—For this purpose, we want to boost overall mitochondrial health, decrease inflammation in the blood, enhance immune function, optimize hormones, and decrease brain inflammation. First, take of all your clothes and shine it diffusely on your entire body for 30-60 seconds (from 24”-36” away), back and front from head to toe, to wake up every cell in your body. 1-2 minutes shining it on the neck and thyroid gland area and thymus area in the center of the chest, from roughly 6-12” away. There are studies already showing this can impact thyroid function (the studies were done in people with Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism), which is critical to metabolic health in the entire body. The light on the thymus can potentially enhance immune function. 1-2 minutes on your sex organs (from 6-12” away) if possible, as this will increase the health of those tissues and promote optimal hormonal function. 1-2 minutes on your belly (from 6-12” away) to get systemic effects through getting the red/NIR light in the entire blood of your body. (Remember, some research has shown systemic effects, likely from irradiating the blood and affecting blood cells, inflammatory cytokines, and immune cells.) 1-3 minutes on your forehead/brain (from 6-12” away) and another 1-3 minutes on the base of the neck and spine area to decrease brain inflammation and support mitochondrial health in the brain. Total treatment time should be no more than 10-12 minutes. Also, be aware that if you have severe fatigue (e.g. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) or are very ill with a particular condition, you may need to cut these doses in half or even do only 1/4th or 1/5th of these recommendations to start. Remember that the more unwell you are, the smaller doses you should use, especially starting out.

The medical research community came to recognize that insulin resistance and a condition now known as “metabolic syndrome” is a major, if not the major, risk factor for heart disease and diabetes. Before we get either heart disease or diabetes, we first manifest metabolic syndrome. The CDC now estimates that some seventy-five million adult Americans have metabolic syndrome. The very first symptom or diagnostic criterion that doctors are told to look for in diagnosing metabolic syndrome is an expanding waistline. This means that if you’re overweight or obese—as two-thirds of American adults are—there’s a good chance that you have metabolic syndrome; it also means that your blood pressure is likely to be elevated, and you’re glucose-intolerant and thus on the way to becoming diabetic. This is why you’re more likely to have a heart attack than a lean individual—although lean individuals can also have metabolic syndrome, and those who do are more likely to have heart disease and diabetes than lean individuals without it. Metabolic syndrome ties together a host of disorders that the medical community typically thought of as unrelated, or at least having separate and distinct causes—getting fatter (obesity), high blood pressure (hypertension), high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol (dyslipidemia), heart disease (atherosclerosis), high blood sugar (diabetes), and inflammation (pick your disease)—as products of insulin resistance and high circulating insulin levels (hyperinsulinemia). It’s a kind of homeostatic disruption in which regulatory systems throughout the body are misbehaving with slow, chronic, pathological consequences everywhere.

Metabolic syndrome changes the vocabulary that physicians use when they discuss a patient’s risk of heart disease. High cholesterol isn’t among the cluster of metabolic abnormalities, nor is elevated LDL cholesterol, the “bad” cholesterol. Rather, the key factors are high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, high blood pressure, overweight, glucose intolerance, and, more than anything, the condition of being insulin-resistant and thus oversecreting insulin, day in and day out. All of these abnormalities happen to be related to the carbohydrate content of the diet, not to the fat content.

All these women will have higher blood sugar on average than women who remain lean and healthy; their triglycerides will be higher as well. This would explain why maternal obesity, as has been documented repeatedly, is a strong risk factor for childhood obesity and among the strongest predictors of metabolic syndrome and obesity in adulthood. This implies, of course, that if insulin-resistant, obese, and/or diabetic mothers give birth to children who are more predisposed to being insulin-resistant, obese, and diabetic when they, in turn, are of childbearing age, the problem will get worse with each successive generation—a “vicious cycle,” as it’s often described in the medical literature by researchers who pay attention to the issue.

Artificial sweeteners (noncaloric sweeteners, as the USDA calls them) as a replacement for sugar muddy these waters even more. Much of the anxiety about these sweeteners was generated in the 1960s and 1970s by the research, partly funded by the sugar industry, as we’ve seen, that led to the banning of cyclamates as a possible carcinogen, and the suggestion that saccharin could cause cancer (at least in rats, at extraordinarily high doses). Though this particular anxiety has tapered off with time, it has been replaced by the suggestion that maybe these artificial sweeteners can cause metabolic syndrome, and thus obesity and diabetes. This conjecture comes primarily from epidemiological studies that show an association between the use of artificial sweeteners and obesity and diabetes. But whether this means artificial sweeteners cause obesity and diabetes is, again, impossible to say.

But salt sensitivity also seems to be associated with insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. Salt-sensitive hypertension, for instance, can be caused in rats merely by damaging the capillaries of the kidney in the same way that high levels of uric acid do. These observations and others have led researchers to suggest that salt sensitivity is caused by insulin resistance. If so, then telling people with or without salt-sensitive hypertension to eat less salt might ameliorate one of the symptoms of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome—the hypertension. They would be better served by being told to avoid whatever was causing the insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome in the first place—i.e., sugar. That would take care of the root cause of the disorder, not just one of the symptoms.

In 2003, epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control, led by Eugenia Calle, published an analysis in The New England Journal of Medicine reporting that cancer mortality in the United States was clearly associated with obesity and overweight. The heaviest men and women, they reported, were 50 and 60 percent more likely, respectively, to die from cancer than the lean. This increased risk of death held true for a host of common cancers—esophageal, colorectal, liver, gallbladder, pancreatic, and kidney cancers, as well as, in women, cancers of the breast, uterus, cervix, and ovary. In 2004, the CDC followed up with an analysis linking cancer to diabetes, particularly pancreatic, colorectal, liver, bladder, and breast cancers. Cancer researchers trying to make sense of this association would later say that something about cancer seems to thrive on the metabolic environment of the obese and the diabetic. One conspicuous clue as to what that something might be was that the same association was seen with people who weren’t obese and diabetic (or at least not yet) but suffered only from metabolic syndrome and thus were insulin-resistant. The higher their levels of circulating insulin, and that of a related hormone known as insulin-like growth factor, the greater the likelihood that they would get cancer.

Despite reducing sugar, diet sodas do not reduce the risk of obesity, metabolic syndrome, strokes or heart attacks. But why? Because it is insulin, not calories, that ultimately drives obesity and metabolic syndrome.

For every diabetic, there are three or four people with prediabetes (encompassing the conditions impaired fasting glucose, impaired glucose tolerance, and metabolic syndrome)

Metabolic Syndrome

A number of studies have found that fructose: ■ inhibits our immune system, making it harder to fight off viruses and infections. ■ upsets the mineral balance in our bodies, causing deficiencies as well as interfering with mineral absorption. ■ messes with fertility. ■ speeds up the aging process. ■ has been connected with the development of cancers of the breast, ovaries, prostate, rectum, pancreas, lung, gallbladder and stomach. ■ is linked to dementia. ■ causes an acidic digestive tract, indigestion and malabsorption. ■ can cause a rapid rise in adrenaline, as well as hyperactivity, anxiety and a loss of concentration. SUGAR = POISON? The research is growing to show sugar is indeed poisoning us. Studies are proving sugar to be the biggest cause of fatty liver, which leads to insulin resistance. This then causes metabolic syndrome, which is now being seen as the biggest precursor to heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Through the lens of Bad Energy, this makes sense to me now: due to several changes in my lifestyle and stress levels as a new surgical resident, my brain cells likely did not have the power to provide me with the full spectrum of thought and emotion, nor the energy to want to keep going. There have been several reported associations between metabolic syndrome biomarkers and suicidal ideation,

One is elevated cortisol, already mentioned as a stress hormone important in bodily mobilization for use in short-term emergencies, such as a zebra needing to escape from a lion. Normally, cortisol is tightly regulated to help it return to low levels, but this hormone is persistently elevated in many depressed people. Longer exposure to high cortisol has a welter of physical effects, like wasting muscles and even damaged neurons in the brain. Prolonged cortisol exposure may also help stretch out depression. Consistent with this notion, patients with Cushing’s syndrome, a metabolic disorder caused by high levels of cortisol, often become depressed.