Do you consider yourself healthy? But how do you know If you have never experienced better health? In addition, many blood and urine test results could be difficult to interpret. The reference ranges of the tests are not as universal as one may think since they are calculated on statistical averages of the population and vary from country to country. These could complicate understanding the results. I often hear people refer to "metabolic health". I have decided to dwell on the topic and investigate what metabolic health really means, why it's important and how to attain it.
What is Metabolic Health
I looked at the definition and discovered that metabolic health was the absence of metabolic syndromes. Metabolic syndrome is not a disease but is a clustering of individual metabolic risk factors, including abdominal obesity, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, and inflammation of bones and joints. According to the definition published in The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal, you are metabolically healthy if you have normal blood sugar and normal blood pressure, stable appetite and energy, minimum belly fat and muscles, bones and joints that let you be active. Let's examine these health markers one by one.
Belly fat
Your waist circumference is very important, more important than your weight. For men, a waist circumference greater than 102 cm and for women greater than 89 cm would be considered a risk factor for metabolic disease. Your belly fat makes up about 4 to 6 % of your total body fat, so you won't necessarily see it reflected on the scale. And what matters most is the fat in the belly region surrounds your internal organs. According to a study conducted at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., visceral fat—fat stored around your organs—appears to be responsible for escalating rates of metabolic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure (also known as hypertension). Just by losing weight alone, you can significantly lower your risk of developing these problems. This is because visceral fat is metabolically active tissue that produces proinflammatory cytokines, which are chemicals that trigger inflammation throughout your body. Reduce your waist and experience an improvement in insulin sensitivity and an overall reduction in your inflammatory profile.
Blood sugar
In the context of metabolic health, fasting blood sugar greater than 5.5 mmol/l is a sign of insulin or blood sugar problems. A diet with processed food, sugar, and refined carbohydrates can lead to weight gain, inflammation, and insulin resistance. These factors increase the risk of developing diabetes and heart disease. When eating right and exercising, you can keep your fasting glucose levels in check.
Blood pressure
Blood pressure can have a dramatic impact on metabolic health. When blood pressure is elevated (hypertension), it's considered a risk factor for heart disease. So it's crucial to control your blood pressure to keep you healthy. Monitoring your numbers is essential, as for every 10 mm Hg increase in systolic blood pressure (the upper number), you double your risk for heart disease. For example, if your systolic blood pressure is 140 mm Hg, that's four times greater than someone with normal blood pressure, which is 120 mm or less. And while high-blood-pressure medications are often prescribed to lower these numbers, research suggests that exercise may be an even more effective tool for controlling hypertension. A recent study found that aerobic exercise reduced both diastolic and systolic blood pressures by 5 mm Hg after only four weeks. That's not much, but over time those numbers will add up. Another study showed that walking just 30 minutes per day lowered blood pressure by 4 mm Hg within one month.
Healthy joints
Painful joints are not fun and are a sign of inflammation. One benefit you might not be aware of is that exercise can help reduce inflammation. Certain types of aerobic exercise (i.e., fast walking) have been found to have an anti-inflammatory effect in studies on people with osteoarthritis (OA), characterised by inflammation in bones and joints. In one study, walking for about 70 minutes per week was associated with improved knee function among women with knee OA compared to those who walked less or didn't walk at all. Aerobic exercise also helps strengthen muscles around your knees and hips, so they support your weight better when you move. Strengthening these muscles may help reduce your risk of falling, which could further aggravate joint pain if you have OA.
Benefits of Exercise on Metabolic Health
Exercise is one of the best ways to improve your metabolic and cardiovascular health. It can increase muscle mass, reduce visceral fat and weight, improve blood pressure, promote healthy bones and joints, and more. A great place to start would be consulting with a personal trainer who can help you develop an effective exercise plan that includes the following elements: strength training, cardiovascular exercise, and stretching/flexibility exercises. Such training protocol can help you lose weight, build lean muscle, reduce stress and improve mental clarity. For example, a personal trainer could prescribe training sessions of 45 minutes in duration, typically completed 3-5 times per week and focus on interval training for short bursts of intense exercise followed by short periods of rest.
Exercise also reduces inflammation throughout your body, another major contributor to heart disease and other chronic conditions like diabetes and obesity. In fact, a 2012 review of 45 studies found that people who worked out regularly had 30 per cent less C-reactive protein (CRP)—an indicator of inflammation—in their bodies than sedentary individuals.
The Diet Connection
When you think about getting healthier, you probably imagine running on the treadmill or lifting weights at the gym. Still, exercise isn't the only way to improve your metabolic health. Many factors affect your metabolic health beyond simply exercising more. It begins in the kitchen.
Although scientists are just starting to uncover how diet affects our health at a molecular level, there's no shortage of research on how unhealthy diets can contribute to chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Making healthy food swaps is a great way to start healing your body and improving your metabolic health. For example, if you eat too many refined carbs, it will spike your insulin levels and then cause them to plummet low again, eventually leading to insulin resistance—the precursor to type 2 diabetes. To prevent getting sick from a high fasting blood sugar level, make sure you consume whole food, like vegetables, instead of white bread, pasta, and rice. It would be best if you also tried to avoid sugary drinks like juices and carbonated beverages since they're full of empty calories. Instead, drink water or tea with fresh lemon juice squeezed into it.
Common Myths
Myth One: exercise will make me lose weight.
While it is true that exercise can contribute to weight loss, exercise alone will not lead to weight loss. It's important not to rely on exercise as your primary method for losing weight because if you become injured or sick, you won't be able to exercise for some time. And there are plenty of other reasons why exercise isn't always effective for weight loss, including lack of sleep and stress. Instead, focus on eating right and exercising regularly—and don't worry about what the scale says! Concentrate on improving your overall quality of life instead of trying to achieve a specific fitness goal. You'll likely see positive changes in your body composition over time, even without dramatic shifts in weight.
Myth Two: you do not need to exercise if you're following a healthy diet.
Sure, to improve your metabolic health, it is crucial to introduce small but consistent changes to your nutrition. But regardless of your diet, exercise is integral to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It would help if you were sure to exercise at least 30 minutes per day, 3-4 times per week. Unfortunately, we all have things going on in our lives that make it hard to work out and eat healthy foods all the time, even though we know it will benefit us in the long run. That's where a personal trainer comes in handy! Working with a personal trainer can help you find the right combination of nutrition and exercise. This way, you'll know what works and doesn't work for you so that healthy habits stick.
Why Hiring a Personal Trainer is a Good Idea
If you want to feel better, start by considering the whole picture of what it means to be healthy. You can continually improve your metabolic health by introducing changes to your lifestyle. And a personal trainer is the perfect person to help you with this goal of improving your metabolic health. They will work with you to create a nutrition plan that addresses your unique lifestyle needs while helping you achieve your fitness goals. Plus, they can motivate and encourage you when life gets hard and in the way. The benefits of hiring a personal trainer will most likely lead to improved metabolic health in less time than if you were trying it on your own.
As your personal trainer, it's my job to maximise your diet and exercise habits to help you reach your goals as fast as possible, which means improving your metabolic health in the best ways possible. So please connect with me for more life hacks, fitness insights and nutritional recommendations.
References
Aerobic Exercise and Resting Blood Pressure: A Meta-Analytic Review of Randomized, Controlled Trials