"Deadly Quartet": How to recognize - and fight - the metabolic syndrome
Created: 05/31/2022, 09:18 am
By: Juliane Gutmann
There are factors that increase the risk of heart disease such as a heart attack immensely.
If several meet, doctors speak of the metabolic syndrome.
Have you heard of the "deadly quartet"?
This is colloquially used to refer to a number of health risk factors.
Doctors speak of the metabolic syndrome.
In patients, four risk factors come together that damage blood vessels and
immensely increase the likelihood of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and death
.
According to the Internet portal
Internists
, these include:
severe overweight (obesity) with a lot of belly fat
high blood pressure
Elevated blood sugar level (disturbed sugar metabolism in the form of insulin insensitivity or resistance)
disturbed lipid metabolism
In addition, those affected often experience increased uric acid, low-grade inflammation, increased blood clotting and endothelial dysfunction.
Exercising regularly is a great way to prevent metabolic syndrome.
© Michael Eichhammer/imago-images
Metabolic syndrome, a disease of affluence: the causes
Lack of exercise and unbalanced overeating are considered to be the main causes of metabolic syndrome.
Here diseases of affluence come together that are particularly widespread in industrialized nations.
According to the
internists on the Internet
, around 30-35 percent of the population in Germany suffer from a metabolic syndrome
, and the number is rising and the number of unreported cases is unknown.
It is particularly worrying that it is no longer just older people aged 60 and over who are affected, but also more and more children and young people.
Prevention through sport, therapy through lifestyle changes
The good news: It is usually simple lifestyle changes that bring high blood pressure, obesity, high blood sugar levels and a disturbed lipid metabolism back into balance.
This primarily includes a change in diet and regular exercise
.
When it comes to diet, patients should make sure they eat regularly, eat a maximum of three meals a day and avoid sugary drinks and industrial sugar in general.
The basis of the diet should consist of vegetables prepared with high-quality oils such as nut or linseed oil, the Norddeutscher Rundfunk further informs.
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Depending on how far the metabolic syndrome has progressed, drug therapy may also be necessary.
The doctor treating you is the right contact person
with regard to the diagnosis and therapy of the metabolic syndrome.
Fitness survey
Read more
: "Silent Killer": Researchers discover new early warning signal for heart disease.
More sources
: https://www.internisten-im-netz.de/illnesses/metabolic-syndrom/
(jg)
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