METABOLIC SYNDROME
“Control your destiny or somebody else will.”
Jack Welsh
Metabolic syndrome (Syndrome X) is a cluster of conditions, which relates to the modern tendency for vascular abnormalities and thus the likelihood of eventually suffering a heart attack or stroke. No other medical concept gets more research time and funding and its prevention is presented in both professional and lay media as the ultimate goal of modern medicine.
This syndrome and its associated symptoms are therefore constantly in the back of everybody’s mind: “Do I eat the right food?”, “I should do more exercise…”, “It’s time for a medical check-up” … Of course, any ‘medical check up’ is in any case about metabolic syndrome in the mind of the doctor as well as the insurance broker. A Google search of metabolic syndrome comes up with 11 million results in 0.17 seconds. This preoccupation with metabolic syndrome has considerable consequences in medicine, economy and social society. Most pharmaceutical companies, private hospitals and lately also many food suppliers rely for their survival on metabolic syndrome. We eat, exercise and shape our bodies according to the prescriptions for metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome defines modern society.
However, controversy is never far behind where it comes to this trendsetting blundering in our body’s organisation. More and more facets of inner metabolic organisation, organ systems such as the immune system and, most of all, of our mental processes are now working their way into the loosely woven network. In its traditional form, which connects diabetes, high blood pressure and central obesity to damage in blood vessels, stroke and heart disease, the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome rests upon measurement of separate factors that seemingly have no logical connection. Blood sugar, midline measurement, weight, blood pressure and proteins that relate to inflammation blend together in an abstract mosaic of medical diagnosis. Even when seen as insulin resistance – where the body becomes insensitive to insulin, a hormone that is linked to our inner energy supply and the process of aging – it is not easy to find an integrated model for the explanation of metabolic syndrome.
Up to 30% of people in Western society suffer from this malfunctioning in their metabolic adaptation system. Therefore, while researchers squabble about the true nature and explanation of metabolic syndrome, it is crucial to find a bio-dynamic interpretation of the association between the syndrome and a modern life style. Is it a mistaken defence originating in the immune system or a stubborn habituation in order to stay in control of a constantly shifting outer world?
Read more and decide how this highly fashionable disease pattern and its symbolic representation relate to you:
What is MX/Metabolic Syndrome. What happens when we have MX/Metabolic Syndrome. What can be done about MX/Metabolic Syndrome. Living with MX/Metabolic Syndrome.