Inspiration

Jane Reversed Her Metabolic Disorder By Systematically Mitigating 7 Risk Factors.

Here’s a summary of an office worker’s inspiring holistic health approach and protocols, transforming her metabolic and mental health after her 50s.

I met Jane in a client's office when she was 47. She was the manager of the sales team, which was mainly male-oriented. Her friendly and professional approach made us good friends in a short time. While she excelled in her professional life with diligence, she struggled in her personal life.

One day during a social occasion, she volunteered to share her struggles transparently with me. The major problem was her metabolic syndrome, detected by her family doctor. However, the physician in that busy clinic asked her to make some lifestyle changes but did not create a plan for her.

She felt lost and had no idea how to lose the excess visceral fat that had accumulated over the years. Her stress levels were high due to personal relationship issues which also caused her smoking addiction and excessive caffeine use. In short, she lost her work-life balance and needed help to regain her metabolic and mental health.

After listening to her story, I mentioned several friends who recovered from metabolic disorders, including fatty liver, metabolic syndrome, and type II diabetes, with support from qualified holistic healthcare professionals.

The critical success factors for those friends were obtaining timely professional support and systematically lowering risks with healthy lifestyle modifications.

Therefore, I introduced Jane to an experienced metabolic health specialist with dual medical board certification covering the body and mind, who followed a holistic approach, helped her reverse her metabolic syndrome with contributions from other qualified professionals, and improved her mood and mental well-being.

As a close friend and colleague, I interacted with Jane during her transformation and supported her progress. The solution of her case reflects the holistic health principles; therefore, I thought it is worth sharing critical points without going into detail for awareness and inspiration purposes.

I will summarize the critical risk factors and her approach to mitigating them with personal responsibility and professional support under seven short sections. First, I’d like to emphasize the importance of a proactive risk management approach for improving metabolic and mental health.

Proactive Risk Management Approach for Health

Risks are inevitable in life. We all face them and have to deal with them timely to survive and thrive. While we cannot eliminate all risks, we can take steps and get timely support to lower the probability of disease manifestation and increase the likelihood of recovery and healing.

Therefore a holistic, proactive, and balanced risk management approach is essential for optimal health and well-being. Physical and mental health are intertwined. These risk factors impact both types of disorders.

Metabolic syndrome risks are identified by checking the waistline size, fasting glucose, blood pressure, triglycerides, and cholesterol levels.

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 more significant risk for the aging population because as people get older, their metabolism slows down, and their defense systems weaken. Thus, unhealthy older people are usually prone to more type II diabetes, heart attacks, and cancers.

Likewise, mental health disorders, including psychological and neurological conditions like dementia, can adversely affect our mental and emotional well-being. Therefore, as a health content creator, I emphasize the importance of risk management in my stories.

Some disorders can be inherited from parents. Chromosomal disorders and genetic mutations cause metabolic and mental health disorders. Our genes constantly provide information to cells. Some genes can initiate diseases, and some can prevent them.

Furthermore, oxidative stress, generating free radicals, can damage the DNA. Stressors in our cells can induce mutations and damage the genome.

We cannot yet change our genes, but we can make epigenetic effects with healthy lifestyle choices to lower risks and enhance recovery chances.

7 Risk Factors Jane Mitigated with Support from Multiple Specialists

Risk 1 — Sedentary Life

I’d like to introduce this as the first risk factor, as it was the most apparent and interrelated aspect of her situation. Jane had no physical or mental energy to exercise, and her mood was mainly gloomy.

As the specialist identified her sedentary life as a critical risk, he referred her to an experienced sports coach to personalize a workout regimen for her. After assessing Jane’s situation and health history, the coach produced a practical plan which Jane could stick to.

Rather than giving her classical exercise workouts, he introduced lifestyle changes so that she could move from sedentary to active.

Jane's key point in this regimen was to be part of a supportive community that inspired and encouraged her to move her body safely and joyfully.

She enjoyed bushwalking, swimming, yoga, Zumba, tennis, gentle resistance training with gym machines and light weights around five-kilo dumbells.

Risk 2 — Excessive Calories and Nutritional Deficiencies

Consuming more calories than her body needed was a critical risk. Jane’s biggest weakness was eating comfort food with empty calories to numb her unpleasant emotions.

These comfort foods included too many refined carbs and unhealthy fats, creating a massive caloric intake with main meals and multiple snacks.

Her binge eating was another factor the specialist identified. Therefore, he referred Jane to an experienced dietician who personalized her diet, considering her needs and emotional state.

As Jane was omnivorous, it was much easier for the dietician to create a healing, energy-providing, and sustainable diet.

The dietician removed all offending foods and replaced them with whole foods that Jane would enjoy and get satisfied with.

This plan allowed Jane to consume adequate calories from nutrient-dense foods addressing her nutritional deficiencies.

Optimal calories with essential nutrients speeded up the fat loss for Jane while keeping her energy levels high and her mood uplifting.

Risk 3— Sleep Deprivation

Unfortunately, sedentary life, excessive calories, and nutritional deficiencies caused Jane to experience sleep disorders, especially insomnia.

Moreover, she craved food and had no energy to move her body when she was sleep-deprived. It was like a vicious circle.

Recognizing this significant risk, her physician referred Jane to a sleep specialist who helped her address the underlying issues and develop effective sleep hygiene, which Jane implemented rigorously.

The primary culprit was excessive stress breaking the balance of her hormones like cortisol and melatonin and preventing her from getting restorative sleep.

Lowering stress with the previous items and adding other stress management tools like mindfulness and meditation to her lifestyle helped a lot. In addition, the sleep specialist helped her to lower caffeine and consume it only in the earlier part of the day.

Risk 4— Oxidative Stress and Chronic Inflammation

The previous points, like lack of exercise, inadequate nutrition, excessive calories, especially from sugar, and sleep disorders, caused significant oxidative stress for Jane leading to chronic inflammation.

However, the good news for Jane was that the solutions related to the previous items substantially lowered stress and inflammation.

Her energy levels increased, and her back and joint pain reduced when the inflammatory blood markers optimized.

When dealing with these items, the specialist referred Jane to a psychologist who developed a comprehensive stress management plan. I cover this in the last section.

Risk 5— Toxins and Pathogens Affecting Gut

Another item the specialist focussed on was the toxins accumulated in Jane’s body, mainly caused by smoking cigarettes frequently and for a long time.

Unfortunately, Jane also had intestinal permeability (leaky gut), which allowed toxins and pathogens to enter her bloodstream, inflaming her body, causing digestive disorders, and weight gain. She had no clue about this condition.

The holistic help approach coordinated by her specialist helped heal her leaky gut. Her dietician played a role in this process by removing offending food and introducing food rich in collagen that healed her gut.

After quitting smoking and fixing her leaky gut, Jane felt abundant energy, allowing her to exercise joyfully, eat only healthy food, and sleep beautifully.

Risk 6— Hormonal Imbalances

From the beginning, specialists knew Jane’s hormones were imbalanced and required optimization. However, he first created the fundaments for Jane to make hormonal changes.

Jane's hormones functioned better after addressing her dietary and sleep issues and allowing her body to move joyfully.

More specially, her body became more insulin sensitive, her leptin started working better, preventing emotional eating, her elevated cortisol levels normalized, lowering her stress, and her melatonin worked well, allowing her to sleep better.

Fixing these three hormonal issues made the most significant impact in reversing her metabolic syndrome, lowering visceral fat, and maintaining lean muscles.

Risk 7 — Emotional and Relationship Issues

The emotional aspect of health and well-being is usually overlooked as most healthcare systems focus on the physical facets of metabolic health. Therefore, the holistic health specialist analyzed this critical layer and created a plan for Jane.

In addition to having a tough childhood, as a female employee, Jane faced discrimination at work and struggled to find her way in the competition.

The unresolved childhood issues, coupled with her divorce from her partner and work issues, put Jane in an emotionally disadvantaged position.

The psychologist referred Jane to an experienced psychotherapist for relationship issues and childhood traumas.

The sessions provided by this therapist changed the way Jane dealt with emotions. She learned not to numb her emotions but healthily express them.

Final Results and Takeaways

Apart from fundamentals such as getting adequate calories, balanced nutrition, regular workouts, restorative sleep, rest, and fun, Jane took other proactive measures to improve her health.

She started eating her food in a specific window and gave the digestive system a rest that optimized hormones better, created alternative energy via ketosis, and initiated autophagy and mitophagy.

Ketones created via time-restricted eating and regular workouts also served as signaling molecules, reduced inflammation in cells, and increased Brain-Derived Neurotropic factors improving her metabolic and mental health.

Like me, Jane started occasional long-term fasting, intense exercises, especially tennis, thermogenesis, meditation, and working in a flow state, which took her metabolic and mental health to another level. She felt healthier, younger, and happier as she grew older.

With abundant energy, Jane developed an interest in various sports and became a tennis coach after retiring from her office management role.

More inspiringly, the holistic health specialist did not use medication or surgery to solve Jane’s weight and metabolic disorders during the healing process. It was all through gaining healthy lifestyle habits.

When Jane’s metabolic syndrome was reversed:

1 — She lost substantial visceral fat and maintained lean muscles.

2 — Her oxiditive stress and choronic inflammation diminished.

3 — Her food craving, allergies, and food intolerance disappeared.

4 — Her heartburn, bloating, and distension disappeared.

5 — Her skin got smoother, and her hair got shinier.

6 — Her mood enhanced to a cheerful one.

7 — Her social connections and relationships got better.

Managing health risks is critical. However, proactively increasing our fitness and cognitive reserves can be an excellent way to lower the effects of age-related metabolic and mental health conditions.

Furthermore, identifying and addressing triggers and aggravators can contribute to better risk management for disorders.

One of the best risk reduction and mitigation methods is regular health checkups that might indicate disease formation in the body.

I believe that our health and well-being focus should aim to lower the probability of disease manifestation and increase the possibility of recovery and healing.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

I write about hormones and neurotransmitters. 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, Phosphatidylserine, 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.

Disclaimer: My posts do not include professional or health advice. I only document my reviews, observations, experience, and perspectives 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.

You might join my six publications on Medium as a writer by sending a request via this link. 21K+ writers contribute to my publications. You might find more information about my professional background. You may join Medium with my referral link.