what is metabolic syndrome and should you blame your belly fat
well belly fat has been associated with metabolic syndrome so closely that they
believe that belly fat was the cause of metabolic syndrome but very often that's
how it goes when we get cause-and-effect confused so today we're gonna talk about
the real cause of metabolic syndrome and what you can do about it coming right up
hey I'm Dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if
you want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works
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anything so why did they think belly fat was
involved well they've often talked about how fat on the middle of the body the
abdominal obesity is much more dangerous than if you have the extra fat somewhere
else and it is but it's not because the fat itself is dangerous it's because of
the factors giving rise to it so why is metabolic syndrome so important why do
we need to know about it because there's over three million new cases in the
United States alone there's over 47 million existing cases in the United
States and they're estimating that as much as a quarter of the entire
population of the planet are probably affected by metabolic syndrome then they
will tell you if you look it up next that it can't be cured and therefore
obviously it's chronic and lifelong so we're gonna examine all of that now
metabolic syndrome isn't really a thing it's a label it's a grouping that they
give you syndrome basically just means that they're not sure where it comes
from but there's more than one factor involved so when you have more than one
thing going on then they call it a syndrome but there's five criteria one
is abdominal obesity the second is that you have elevated tried
that your blood fats the triglycerides in your book in your blood are over a
hundred and fifty milligrams per deciliter that you have elevated blood
pressure that your blood pressure is 130 over 85 or higher that you have elevated
blood glucose that you're either pre-diabetic or type 2 diabetic and by
the way 85% of diabetics have metabolic syndrome and the fifth thing they look
at is that if you have a low HDL so for a woman a low HDL is below 50 from man a
low HDL is below 40 and they also define the abdominal obesity as a waist
measurement for a woman over 35 inches and from man above 40 inches those are
the criteria and if you have more than three if you have three or more of these
five then they label you with metabolic syndrome so it's not really a disease
it's just a cluster of conditions that go together and is typical with diseases
especially syndromes they will tell you that there is no known cause but let's
just look back into the medical textbooks let's look at some irrefutable
facts that you can look up from a medical textbook from a book of
physiology at any time and let's see what we find out so fact number one
carbohydrates are the strongest trigger of blood glucose carbohydrates are
different forms of sugar they're quickly absorbed they raise blood sugar next
irrefutable fact is that things that raise blood sugar faster foods that are
high glycemic index will also trigger higher insulin responses and if we have
insulin levels being elevated for a long period of time the body develops insulin
resistance once you have insulin
resistance now the cells don't want the glucose so the glucose Rises and we have
this nice vicious cycle called insulin resistance that eventually leads to type
2 diabetes so that is a fact that the more carbohydrates a food contains the
higher the glycemic index all the glycemic indexes above 50 are high
carbohydrate foods all the indexes above 60 or 70 or 80 are foods with more
carbohydrates number 2 fact insulin stimulates insulin promotes the
conversion of blood glucose to fat straight out of the textbook and the fat
is the triglycerides that is one of the criteria for diagnosing the metabolic
syndrome fact number 3 insulin stops fat burning right so insulin promotes fat
development that promotes the manufacture of fat called lipogenesis
and it prevents the burning of fat lipolysis so it stores it and it
prevents the usage fact number 4 cortisol is a hormone is the stress
hormone that raises blood sugar that leads to insulin resistance and it is
very very closely positively associated with belly fat we know the people with
extremely high cortisol levels for example in Cushing's syndrome they will
have insulin resistance that have belly fat they have very typical body shapes
so armed with those four facts let's just look at these so abdomen abdominal
obesity now we know that that is caused by cortisol and insulin triglycerides we
know that that is a result of insulin and insulin resistance
and high blood sugar when the blood sugar can't get into the cells because
of insulin resistance the body needs to do something else with them so the liver
turns the sugar into triglycerides number three high blood pressure blood
pressure is primarily a function of stress it is also a component of
metabolic syndrome but more specifically cortisol and stress will give you high
blood pressure number four the elevated blood glucose is a result of
carbohydrate consumption and high insulin just like we see here elevated
glucose elevated insulin insulin resistance and so forth
and number five reduced HDL and also increased LDL is a result of
inflammation so when we use these four facts and we look at the criteria it's
pretty plain to see that the cause the real cause of metabolic syndrome is
insulin inflammation and stress so obviously if you want to change your
chances change your manifestation the adaptation of metabolic syndrome then
you want to work on these three things but let's look at what is the standard
treatment for metabolic syndrome well for abdominal obesity they tell you lose
weight and then they suggest a healthy diet with which is high in grains and
carbohydrates which is rich in fruits and low-fat dairy or nonfat dairy all of
these things we know are high glycemic index that will promote insulin
resistance then they give you statin drugs for the triglycerides and they
give you statin drugs for the low HDL for the high LDL what is statin drugs do
they interfere with the livers production of cholesterol and
cholesterol again is an essential nutrients it's one of the building
blocks for your brain but the statins the process of interfering with the
cholesterol they also interfered with the body's production of coal q10
coenzyme q10 and that is the critical enzyme inside the mitochondria that
helps the body make energy so the statins will shut down energy production
wherever we have the most mitochondria and where is that it's in your brain
your heart and your liver because they're the most metabolically active
now does that sound like a really great idea if you want to help heart disease
to shut down the energy production in your heart liver and brain well I don't
think so so if I would not recommend taking
statin drugs but I'm not a medical doctor so only you and your doctor can
make that decision but if you are taking any statin drugs you absolutely have to
supplement with high doses of Co Q 10 so obviously when you shut down energy
production in your heart that's not good for the heart when you shut it down in
the liver that's not good for insulin resistance and fatty liver then for the
blood pressure they give you beta blockers and for your type-2 diabetes
for your high blood sugar they give you insulin or insulin promoting medication
so I think by now you see the obvious problem that this problem is caused by
insulin and insulin resistance and blood glucose yet most of the treatment
promotes insulin resistance when you eat a diet high in carbohydrates then you
promote insulin resistance you make it worse
same thing with obviously the type-2 diabetes when they give you insulin when
they trick yourselves into becoming more insulin resistant when they use either
insulin or an insulin mimicking drug then they're increasing
the metabolic syndrome and this is the whole problem we talked about this on
some previous videos that the treatment of the symptom which they believe is
high blood sugar reduces the problems with high blood sugar but it creates the
problem of metabolic syndrome and and this is why so I know it sounds crazy to
treat a problem with something that makes the problem worse but this is what
happens when we ignore the root cause and we focus strictly on treating
symptoms and unfortunately that is the at the core of the whole healthcare
model is to treat symptoms rather than root causes and then when they look at
the situation they get very confused because they're so focused on the
symptoms they get they can't identify the cause and the effect properly but
once we step back and we understand that the causes is insulin inflammation and
stress then there is no way to make this any better unless you reduce the insulin
rather than increase it if you reduce the inflammation and reduce the stress
so how do you do that well in the case of insulin it's pretty
obvious you reduce the foods that stimulate the most insulin and you
reduce the frequency of meals that stimulate insulin so you eat less sugar
less carbs and you eat less frequently that's what we talked a lot about on the
channel you go low-carb keto and intermittent fasting
those are the tools to reduce insulin then you want to reduce inflammation so
what causes inflammation well in general sugar grain and insulin causes
inflammation those are in general more specifically things that cause
inflammation are things that you are sensitive or allergic to because any
time you eat something that your body reacts to you create inflammation so the
most common things people are sensitive to that I find in my office
our grains and processed dairy pasteurized milk primarily but there are
lots of other things people can be sensitive to strawberries or fish or
nuts or night shades and then all of those would be inflammatory to you
the third huge thing is stress because stress contributes to insulin and
inflammation and stress also obviously produces cortisol in cortisol is a
central component to all this this belly fat and insulin resistance so I hope
you're seeing this very very clearly by now that the reason they feel it can't
be cured the reason that it's considered chronic and lifelong is that they're
treating the symptom which allows the real problem to get bigger and grow and
get worse and not only are they allowing the problem but they're treating it with
things that further insulin resistance and that's why it can't be cured but it
doesn't need curing it just needs reversing it's an adaptation if you
remove the things that promoted the adaptation then it will go away so all
of these things are signs and symptoms of your body becoming clogged and if you
want to unclog it then you do you undo these three things if you're a little
bit clogged then you might have one of these five if you have if you're more
clogged than you have three or more but they all go together because they have
the mechanism of insulin in common if you enjoy that information I'm sure that
you're going to love that video thank you so much for watching and I'll see
you in the next video