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Big Gut With Diabetes Can Kill
posted 01/02/03
New study shows that a 40 inch plus waist combined with high
blood pressure can kill!
It's
long been known that having a potbelly and high blood pressure increases your
risk of heart attack or stroke, but a medical study out last week has estimated
that people with those risks and others are two to three times more likely to
die prematurely.
Experts say about one-third of middle-aged men and women in the USA have the
same cluster of risk factors, called metabolic syndrome.
People with this syndrome have at least three of the following risk factors:
high blood sugar; a waist circumference of greater than 40 inches for men or 35
inches for women; lower-than-average HDL cholesterol (the so-called good
cholesterol); high triglycerides and high blood pressure.
Yet
most people with the syndrome have no idea they even have it, says Hanna-Maaria
Lakka, a researcher at the Louisiana State University. The signs of the syndrome
may be easy to ignore or very mild.
Lakka and her colleagues studied 1,209 Finnish men who were middle-aged and
relatively healthy in the 1980s. As many as 14% of the men had metabolic
syndrome. The men in the study didn't have heart disease or diabetes at the
study's start. The team kept track of the men for 14 years and noted each time
one of the recruits died.
The
team found that men who had the syndrome at the study's start had a two to three
times greater chance of dying of a heart attack or a stroke during the study
than men who did not have this collection of risk factors.
In
addition, the team found that men who had the syndrome also had a greater risk
of dying for any reason, although most of the extra risk of death was because of
the higher chance of suffering a heart attack, Lakka says.
People getting a checkup should ask their family doctor to look for metabolic
syndrome, especially if they have a fat middle, says Robert Eckel, a spokesman
for the American Heart Association. He says even doctors can dismiss the mild
abnormalities that together make up the syndrome.
Yet
getting a diagnosis is one step toward a cure. "One of the best treatments for
metabolic syndrome is to get your act together when it comes to diet and
exercise," he says.
Regular exercise and a healthy diet can trim a waistline, lower blood sugar and hopefully reduce the risk associated with this syndrome, he says.
Source: Diabetes In Control Dot Com: AHA Dec. 2002
January 2003 News Article Index
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