
How do you take care of your heart after 40?
As you find yourself hitting 40, you may start thinking about health issues you previously didn’t concern yourself with. Should heart health be one of them?
Metabolic syndrome is a group of conditions including insulin resistance, high blood pressure, elevated fasting blood glucose level, high triglyceride level and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) level. Insulin resistance is common among individuals who are obese. Together, the conditions can negatively affect your heart and contribute to other health problems. Metabolic syndrome may affect 20 to 25 percent of the U.S. population.
The direct cause of metabolic syndrome is not clearly understood. However, obesity coupled with a sedentary lifestyle contributes to developing risk factors for metabolic syndrome – high cholesterol, insulin resistance and high blood pressure.
The risk factors most closely associated with metabolic syndrome are:
Many of these risk factors can be reduced or eliminated by changing your lifestyle.
Some people who have metabolic syndrome and morbid obesity and for whom traditional weight-loss measures have failed may be candidates for weight-loss surgery (bariatric surgery) at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center – designated as a Bariatric Center of Excellence by the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery in 2005. Our surgeons have performed weight-loss procedures for almost 30 years, and they currently perform more than 400 weight-loss surgeries a year.
In general, you do not have direct symptoms of metabolic syndrome. Some national clinical organizations have developed criteria to help diagnose metabolic syndrome. If you have three or more of these factors, you may have metabolic syndrome:
Metabolic syndrome increases your risk for developing more serious conditions such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Therefore, treating metabolic syndrome is important. Treatment may include: