Metabolic syndrome (formerly known as syndrome X) is a term used to describe the inevitable results of the typical high-sugar diet: abdominal fat, elevated triglycerides, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar levels.
Metabolic syndrome should be renamed “excess carbohydrate sickness” because that’s really what it is. Stop eating so many carbohydrates and your “syndrome” magically disappears!
With a high-carbohydrate diet, the insulin receptors on the cells become less and less sensitive. Because the sugar can no longer enter the cells like it’s supposed to, it gets stored as fat instead. Eating a high-sugar diet over time turns your body into a fat-storing factory — you can take in thousands of calories each day, but little of it supplies lean tissue.
Your muscle content drops (which lowers your metabolism), while fat storage becomes more and more efficient. All that body fat increases inflammation, and the insulin resistance refuses to let your body think you’ve had enough food.
The only way to reverse this downward spiral is to drastically reduce your carbohydrate intake and to commit to some short bouts of high-intensity exercise a few times per week.
The figure shows the current clinical definition of metabolic syndrome set by the International Diabetes Foundation at the time of this writing.
