What is Metabolic Health?
Borrowing this quote from the Healthline website, a pretty important summary of recent research!
“…researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill evaluated data from 8,721 adults from the 2009 to 2016 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). They found that just 1 in 8 adults in the United States have optimal metabolic health.
They defined metabolic health as having ideal levels of blood sugar, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference, without using medications. These factors directly relate to a person’s risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.
Participants who were obese fared the worst, with just 0.5 percent achieving optimal metabolic health. However, less than half of those who were underweight and less than a third of participants with normal weights had optimal metabolic health.”
And what is “metabolic syndrome”?
This is defined as having 3 or more of the 5 criteria used above (blood sugar, triglycerides, HDL, blood pressure and waist circumferance).
Important takeaway… having one or two of the criteria, and therefore NOT having “metabolic syndrome” (yet), is still not optimal metabolic health.
Fun fact! Metabolic health is quite simple to improve with the right changes in nutrition and lifestyle! (“Simple”, though not necessarily easy, I know, to make those changes. Support helps!)
