The Better Way Extends to Other Chronic Diseases
The last post presented a 12-step checklist and supporting systems to provide better care for type 2 diabetes. That same checklist with the three targets and several treatments can be extended with minor variations to other high risk, high cost conditions like heart artery disease, heart attack, stroke, and chronic kidney disease. The same team can provide excellent treatment remotely for all these conditions. Type 2 diabetes and other cardiovascular conditions are related at the level of epigenetics and molecular biology. The initial attempt to define and name this relationship was the metabolic syndrome, first coined by Gerald Reaven. This collection of health problems was thought to be due to insulin resistance and is known by several names: Syndrome X, insulin resistance syndrome, dysmetabolic syndrome, cardiometabolic syndrome, and cardiorenal syndrome. The truth is, there is more to it than insulin resistance and it impacts every cell and organ in the body. The picture above shows that low HDL cholesterol, high triglycerides, and abnormal LDL cholesterol are all part of this condition along with obesity, high blood pressure, polycystic ovaries, and gout.
Many of you learned enough about antioxidants and vitamin E to take a supplement to protect your health. That did not pan out. You can easily learn just as much about how components of the metabolic syndrome and the complications from it are caused by excess oxidants which lead to insulin resistance. The treatment steps in our checklist are in fact antioxidants that interfere very precisely with the cause of insulin resistance, the metabolic syndrome and related complications. That is why the checklist produces outcomes that are so much better. These interventions don’t just lower the target risk factor. They protect every cell and organ in the body. You can easily see from the diagram below how certain medications and lifestyle interventions interfere with the core signaling that increases oxidants and causes the metabolic syndrome and related conditions. The next post will discuss a new scientific study that dramatically advances our understanding of these risk factors and their consequences.
.