What is Metabolic Syndrome?
It’s a term used to describe a combination of medical problems that increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes. People with metabolic syndrome have some or all of the following: high blood glucose, high blood pressure, abdominal obesity, low HDL, elevated cholesterol and high triglycerides. The root causes of metabolic syndrome are being obese or overweight, lack of physical activity, and possibly some genetic factors.
Common primary targets for risk reduction are smoking cessation, lowering LDL and blood pressure, and drug therapy to target individual risk factors. But if excess weight is the cause, wouldn’t it be more SENSIBLE to just lose weight? I thought so! Along with some lifestyle changes, weight loss in the ANSWER. In the weight loss treatment of patients with metabolic syndrome, most health care professionals use the glycemic index (GI) as their guideline.
What is the Glycemic Index (GI)?
In 1981, Dr. David Jenkins – at the University of Toronto – developed dietary guidelines for diabetics based on an intrinsic system of “exchanges’. Dr. Jenkins and his team charted how quickly various foods affect blood sugar levels, and assigned each of these foods a “GI-number”. The GI-numbers are derived by comparing the rate of given food’s digestion to that of a reference food know to digest rapidly, such as pure glucose or white bread. The reference food is assigned a GI of 100 and the tested food is charted against this standard. Foods with a high GI (70 and above) are foods that break down quickly and cause a spike in blood sugar levels. Foods with a low GI (55 and below) break down more slowly and steadily, providing a sustained supply of energy.
Many popular diets and weight loss programs (more about these in Chapter 3) wrongly assume that foods which rapidly raise blood sugar levels are responsible for weight gain, and base their entire program on this misconception. They ignore the substantial amount of research that runs counter to their “theory”, and have taken a controversial nutritional concept out of context.
Diets composed of low GI-foods slow down the conversion into blood sugar and lower glucose levels and peaks. These diets also reduce the progression to type 2 diabetes by lowering insulin levels, and satisfy appetite without consuming extra calories. These diets are the new standard for managing diabetes in Canada, UK, France, Australia and New Zealand.
However, the American Diabetic Association (ADA) has not yet endorsed GI. The ADA raises questions about its practical importance since differences in rates of digestion do not warrant changing the diet for diabetics, and “what if different foods are eaten together at meals”? Good point! Furthermore, the ADA points out that fats have a low GI, including peanuts and chocolate; and that therefore a diet exclusively based on low GI puts the individual at risk for heart attack and stroke. Atkins is a good example of this!
Contrarily to what most people and health care professionals belief, white bread and baked potatoes (low fiber, high milled content) raise blood sugar levels with both speed and magnitude, even worse than table sugar! Oats, rye and barley have a lower GI. Amylose and compact sugars such as vegetables, pasta, and oatmeal digest slower; and fructose (simple sugars in fruit) digests slow too since they are processed by the liver prior to entering the blood!
Join the Wellness Revolution
There are not enough clinical trials on GI yet to make a conclusion, but the diets and weight loss programs featuring low GI (low carbohydrate, high protein) plans took the GI out of context. GI is meant to identify the rate of digestion of different foods and possibly incorporating that knowledge to optimize the dietary guidelines for diabetics.
BUT did you also know that most foods with a low GI are fruits, vegetables, grains and beans…NOT meat, milk and cheese! So, all these diets such as Atkins, The Zone and others promoting a high protein intake through the consumption of meat, and restricting the intake of carbohydrates (considered high GI-food) are NOT only totally UN-Healthy, but also ignore the fact that our healthy foods (fruit, vegetables, grains) have an even lower GI than the meats and fats!
Conclusion: Our Sensible weight loss program can be considered a low GI-diet, but is not meant to be! What I mean is, the sensible weight loss program promotes the consumption of healthy foods, including grasses, grains, fruits, vegetables and beans…which all have a low GI, even lower that meats! Interesting, not? Even diabetics would benefit much more from our SENSIBLE weight loss program than from any other low GI diet. WHY? Popular low GI-diets advocate the consumption of meat which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke due to its high fat content. Our SENSIBLE weight loss program promotes foods with a lower GI than meats (in other words, less spikes in blood sugar levels and a more sustained energy) AND does NOT result in any major health risks. In fact, it reduces the risk profile for all diseases! There you have it.
Yours in Optimal Health,
Dr. Mike
Join the Wellness Revolution
Visit Dr. Mike’s Store for Health & Wellness Products
Related Articles
Tags: abdominal obesity, diabetes, elevated cholesterol, Glycemic Index, heart disease, high blood glucose, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, low HDL, Metabolic Syndrome
Loved the article!
Comment by Jennifer — January 4, 2010 @ 11:20 pm
It’s very important to watch you’re GI levels; great article Dr. Mike!
Comment by Deborah — January 5, 2010 @ 10:24 am