Metabolism and Health
Here’s How to Defeat Metabolic Syndrome and Slim Down Waistline with Three Tips.
No matter our age, gender, or financial status, we’ll always have a growing waistline if we don’t address metabolic risks promptly.
What We Need to Know About a Well-Functioning Metabolism
Out metabolism plays a critical role in having a healthy body and brain. The flexibility and inflexibility of our metabolism determine the quality of our health and fitness.
Significant diseases such as diabetes, heart attack, stroke, dementia, and even some cancers indicate metabolism disruption. Essentially, metabolic issues can shorten our lives and trigger unnecessary suffering by causing incapacitating diseases.
The weight loss industry has become a multibillion-dollar business as millions of vulnerable people globally suffer from metabolic disorders. Unfortunately, most solutions focus on quick fixes with expensive supplements and complicated weight loss problems, mainly focusing on the symptoms.
From my experience and observations, the emphasis should be on the root causes of metabolic disorders and fix them with lifestyle choices for a healthy and sustainable fat-loss process.
Being a victim of the wrong solutions in my younger years due to ignorance and a lack of understanding of the root causes, I suffered from metabolic syndrome and gained substantial visceral fat.
However, after grasping the root causes and addressing them methodically with experimentation and support from credible medical professionals, I overcame the effects of metabolic syndrome and managed to gain a healthy and defined body leading to a satisfying life.
What Is Metabolic Syndrome in a Nutshell?
Without going into scientific details, I’d like to briefly introduce what metabolic syndrome means and how it affects our health and well-being. First, we need to understand the concept of metabolism, which is a cellular process including chemical and electrical reactions for the conversion of food to energy.
Three macro-nutrients, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, turn into energy using enzymes and micro-nutrients, including minerals and vitamins. Metabolic energy is measured via calories. Excessive and unused calories might turn into body fat via various processes in metabolic pathways.
Many hormones play a role in metabolism. However, insulin is the master hormone for metabolic activities. The amount of insulin determines the size of our fat stores. In simple terms, the more insulin is released and the longer it stays in the body, the larger the fat stores get. Thus, the bigger our visceral fat stores are, especially in the abdominal area, the higher risk for metabolic syndrome.
A healthy metabolism burns energy from fat or carbs effectively. However, unhealthy metabolism converts excessive glucose into fat and stores it. Constantly storing fat makes our belly and other body parts larger. As a result, we get obese. According to CDC, “obesity and its associated health problems have a significant economic impact on the US health care system, including direct and indirect costs of $147 billion in 2008”.
Metabolic syndrome is the root cause of several health conditions, such as type II diabetes, fatty liver disease, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, and some cancers.
Metabolic syndrome is a bigger problem for the aging population because as people get older, their metabolism slows down, and their defense systems get weaker. Thus, usually, unhealthy older people are prone to have more type II diabetes, heart attacks, and cancers.
In addition, as informed by an article in the National Library of Medicine, “dementia due to metabolic causes is a loss of brain function that can occur with abnormal chemical processes in the body. However, with some of these disorders, if treated early, brain dysfunction can be reversible”.
Medical professionals unanimously look for five established factors to diagnose metabolic syndrome. They are high blood pressure, high blood glucose, excessive abdominal fat, and abnormal cholesterol levels. These five factors pose a significant impact on our physical and mental health.
Out of these indicators of metabolic syndrome, the easiest yet sometimes overlooked factor is the waistline size. The body of knowledge informs that a waistline of over 40 inches for men and over 35 inches for women indicate signs of metabolic syndrome.
American Heart Association, provide clear guidance for indicators of metabolic syndrome to medical practitioners. They are: 1) the size of waistline, 2) elevated fasting glucose, 3) high blood pressure, 4) excessive triglycerides, 5) low HDL cholesterol.
Based on my experience and extensive review of the literature over the last four decades, I offer three solutions to melt visceral fat effectively that worked for me and many other people I observed in my social and professional circles and read in case studies.
From my findings, there is hope to reduce metabolic syndrome risks with awareness, acceptance, corrective lifestyle changes, and support from medical professionals. Essentially, all we need is to accept our condition and take corrective actions for our physical and mental health.
1 — Fix Chronic Stress, Fatigue, and Anxiety
The World Health Organization classifies stress as the health epidemic of the 21st century. A vast amount of medical literature informs that chronic stress adversely affects both physical and mental health.
According to The American Institute of Stress, “more than 73% of people regularly experience physical stress. Major causes of stress in the US are money, health, relationships, poor nutrition, media overload, sleep deprivation.”
One of the major culprits of accumulative stress is unaddressed and repressed toxic emotions. Thus, emotional stress forms a more significant part of chronic stress. As a result of the roller coaster effect created by emotional stress, the body becomes neuro-chemically vulnerable.
During times of excess emotional stress, hormones can become imbalanced, and the immune system becomes weak and compromised.
Growing emotional stress, causing anxiety and fatigue, might be toxic for the body and the brain. The fundamental mechanism of chronic stress, anxiety, and fatigue causing metabolic disorders is hormonal imbalance, especially disrupting master hormones such as insulin, cortisol, and leptin.
Catecholamines, growth hormones, and prolactin also play critical roles in stress response. I introduced the intricacies of six major hormones in gaining or losing visceral fat in this article.
Here are five practical tips to reduce chronic stress.
1 — Deal with micro-stressors and emotional triggers timely.
2 — Improve sleep and nutrition quality.
3 — Rest, laugh, and have fun consistently.
4 — Move the body with pleasure every day.
5 — Love yourself and connect with others meaningfully.
2 — Make the Body Insulin and Leptin Sensitive
Scientific studies indicate that insulin resistance is the root cause of several metabolic disorders. In a nutshell, to be able to cope with the excessive glucose in the bloodstream, the pancreas creates more insulin.
The primary role of insulin is to distribute excess glucose to various cells. If cells cannot respond to insulin signals, the body faces a condition called insulin resistance. It attempts to produce more insulin.
Another critical metabolic hormone is leptin. It is the body’s signaling hormone informing satiety to the brain.
Leptin is created by fat cells. It informs the hypothalamus when the body consumes enough nutrition when consuming food. If leptin does not work, we will not know we ate enough, so keep eating.
Besides, as pointed out in this paper, “leptin regulates energy homeostasis, neuroendocrine function, metabolism, immune function, and other systems through its effects on the central nervous system and peripheral tissues. Obese individuals are resistant to leptin.”
Here are five practical tips to make the body more insulin and leptin sensitive.
1 — Practice time-restricted eating or fast-mimicking diets.
2 — Move the body moderately, timely, and with pleasure to use calories.
3 — Consume nutrient-dense foods to reduce excessive calories.
4 — Reduce stress by increasing sleep quality and having fun.
5 — Reduce refined carbs and increase healthy fats with moderate protein.
3 — Find Effective Ways to Mobilize Fat
In a nutshell, mobilizing fat refers to breaking down stored fat into free fatty acids and transporting them into the bloodstream. The key concept to understand is lipolysis.
When cells and tissues require energy, specific hormones bind to fat cells, triggering triacylglycerol’s hydrolysis. Hydrolysis means the chemical breakdown of fat due to a reaction with water. Triacylglycerols, aka triacylglycerides, refer to fatty acids.
The critical question is how to influence the body to start the process of lipolysis. From my experience and literature review, the key mechanism is creating a caloric deficit by reducing food intake and increasing energy expenditure by moving the body and creating a thermic effect by exposing the body to cold temperatures. The mechanism and methods are well-documented in the body of knowledge. Thus, I don’t go through those details.
I shared my findings on turning white fat into brown fat in an article. As a summary, here are three practical tips for mobilizing fat effectively.
1 — Consider consuming food in a specific window giving the body a chance to tap into fat stores in a fasted state. If this is done by cutting refined carbs, the effect can be more significant.
2 — Move the body regularly, especially two hours after the main meals, to utilize excess calories by muscles. Resistance workouts and HIIT training might produce better results, especially during the fasted state.
3 — Expose the body to cold temperature by going out in cold weather, having cold showers, even considering icebaths if you can manage.
As these activities can create significant stress in the body, they might not suit everyone. Therefore, before fasting, starting a workout regime, and exposing the body to cold, it is critical to obtain advice from qualified medical professionals who can access the medical history and can make an informed assessment to approve these practices.
Furthermore, by activating autophagy within our bodies and improving our mitochondria, we may be able to mobilize fat more efficiently and may benefit from the increased metabolic function.
Conclusions and Takeaways
The obesity epidemic is real, as recognized by prominent health organizations affecting the lives of millions of people. Obesity continues to cause severe health problems for even our children because of complex economic and political practices.
Major science branches, including neuroscience, medical, nutritional, and fitness studies, documented the risk factors for metabolic syndrome leading to serious health conditions such as type II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, fatty liver disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and some cancers.
Many of us are fortunate because we might reduce the risks of metabolic syndrome with simple lifestyle changes and defeat obesity significantly, which I introduced in this article.
However, due to complex health conditions such as hormonal balance and genetic defects, some of us need medical support. Nevertheless, there is also hope for these disadvantaged people as scientists, technologists, and engineers have developed noteworthy solutions that medical professionals can implement.
Thus, it is critical to acknowledge our condition and seek help timely.
The fundamental lifestyle factors we need to combat metabolic syndrome risks are eating healthy food in moderation at specific times, moving the body consistently with joy, getting quality sleep and enough rest, reducing stress by regulating emotions, increasing cognitive flexibility, refraining from harmful substances, connecting with our inner self, and communicating with others meaningfully.
In addition, balancing our hormones by refraining from excessive food, breathing fresh air, drinking clean water, engaging in pleasurable activities, laughing a lot, and working in a flow state are viable solutions.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
Here’s How a Mature-Age Couple Reversed Diabetes and Trimmed Their Bodies with Lifestyle Habits.
If you enjoyed this story, you might also check these relevant stories adding extra details to the fat loss process and healthy weight management concerns.
Three Tips to Eliminate Insulin Resistance and Shrink Waistline
How Alberto Melted His Potbelly & Doubled Testosterone in a Year
How a Single-Mum Reversed Her Obesity and Built up a Unicorn Business
Charlotte Lost 40 Pounds of Visceral Fat After Winning the Battle Against Chronic Fatigue and Stress.
Lean, Fit, & Happy While Becoming Insulin Sensitive, Reducing the Risk of Metabolic Disorders
As a new reader, you might check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting on my reviews, observations, and decades of sensible experiments. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.
I enjoy informing my readers about hormonal intelligence by writing about neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, GABA, acetylcholine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, glutamate, and histamine.
One of my goals as a writer is to raise awareness about the causes and risk factors of prevalent diseases that can lead to suffering and death for a large portion of the population.
To raise awareness about health issues, I have written several articles that present my holistic health findings from research, personal observations, and unique experiences. Below are links to these articles for easy access.
Metabolic Syndrome, Type II Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, Heart Disease, Strokes, Obesity, Liver Cancer, Autoimmune Disorders, Homocysteine, Lungs Health, Pancreas Health, Kidneys Health, NCDs, Infectious Diseases, Brain Health, Dementia, Depression, Brain Atrophy, Neonatal Disorders, Skin Health, Dental Health, Bone Health, Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain, Brain Fog, Chronic Inflammation, Insulin Resistance, Elevated Cortisol, Leptin Resistance, Anabolic Resistance, Cholesterol, High Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, Gastrointestinal Disorders, and Major Diseases.
I also wrote about valuable nutrients. Here are the links for easy access:
Lutein/Zeaxanthin, Boron, Urolithin, taurine, citrulline malate, biotin, lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, CoQ10, PQQ, NADH, TMG, creatine, choline, digestive enzymes, magnesium, zinc, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, and other nutrients to improve metabolism and mental health.
Disclaimer: Please note that my posts do not include professional or health advice. I document my reviews, observations, experience, and perspectives only to provide information and create awareness.
I publish my lifestyle, health, and well-being stories on EUPHORIA. My focus is on metabolic, cellular, mitochondrial, and mental health. Here is my collection of Insightful Life Lessons from Personal Stories.
If you enjoy writing and storytelling, you can join Medium, NewsBreak, and Vocal as a creator to find your voice, reach out to a broad audience, and monetize your content.
As part of my creative non-fiction writing goals, I’d like to share a few stories that might warm our hearts with a bit of humor into weighty topics.
Sample Humorous Stories
Finally, After Burning Her House, Georgia Found Enlightenment
Hilarious Tips to Prevent Brain Atrophy and Keep the Gray Matter Giggling
8 Psychological Points I Had to Unlearn and Relearn the Opposite
Based on my writing experience and observations, I documented findings and strategies that might help you amplify your voice, engage your audience, and achieve your desired outcomes in your writing journey.
You may also check my blog posts about my articles and articles of other writers contributing to my publications on Medium. I share them on my website digitalmehmet.com. Here is my professional bio. You can contact me via weblink.
As a writer, blogger, content developer, and reader, you might join Medium, Vocal Media, NewsBreak, Medium Writing Superstars, Writing Paychecks, WordPress, and Thinkers360 with my referral links. This post includes affiliate links.
You might join my six publications on Medium as a writer by sending a request via this link. 24K+ writers contribute to my publications. You might find more information about my professional background.
You may join Medium with my referral link.
