Metabolic Syndrome: Follow These Prevention Steps For A Healthy Life

Health paves the road for leading an optimistic life; healthy lifestyle practices form the guardrails in this journey. The essential place of health in human life, is a universal truth. In the same breath, it is also true that measures towards maintaining good health, are often not realized as well. Good health may be viewed as basic human right; maintaining healthy lifestyle is a simple duty towards it.

Today, our country faces a substantial avoidable problem stemming from such lifestyle disorders. Type-2 diabetes, raised blood-pressure, high cholesterol levels, obesity, high stress-levels, and tobacco consumption, represent such lifestyle disorders. These lead to higher risk of complications like premature heart-disease, and eventually, premature death. Therefore, it is crucial to take steps towards minimizing the avoidable risks, cannot be understated. One such step in this regard, is to practice metabolic hygiene.

Metabolism is the summation of biochemical processes occurring within the body, to maintain energy-balance, and sustain life. In present times, our general lifestyle is characterized by easier supply of food, with lesser physical activity. This way of life can easily tilt the balance towards energy-excess, leading to mal-adaptive metabolism, and manifesting as diabetes and obesity. Metabolic hygiene is a vision of a responsible and health-appropriate behavior, adopted by one and all as routine way of life, towards sustaining good health.

It is essential to include these - ABCDE:

A: A1c control (long-term control of blood-glucose levels)

B: Blood-pressure control

C: Cholesterol-level control

D: Diet-control

E: Exercise

ABCDE represents a commitment towards metabolic hygiene, that lays the foundation of good diabetes-care. In the present scenario, with reduced in-person visits for routine medical check-up, home based self-monitoring of blood-glucose and blood-pressure has gained importance. In such scenario, it is important to have a meticulous record of such measurements, shared with the doctor for regular monitoring of health status. A well-tailored diet plan aimed at customized goal for weight-control, adequate physical activity based on individual health-status, and good management of stress in long-run, form key aspects of metabolic hygiene. As a popular proverb reads, hygiene is two-thirds of health. Indeed, several avoidable risk-factors for premature death in our population, can be well-approached through a sound commitment to metabolic hygiene.

(Dr Sanjay Kalra (Senior Endocrinologist - Karnal), Founder and General Secretary of South Asian Federation of Endocrine Societies; Past-President of Endocrine Society of India; Previous Executive Editor of Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism)

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