What is metabolic syndrome?

Hello everyone! My name is Chiu-Li Yeh, I am a professor in school of Nutrition and Health Science at TMU. Today my topic is metabolic syndrome and fish oil. so let’s join my class There are three parts of my speech today First of all, I will explain what is metabolic syndrome. Second I would like to talk about fish oil and disease prevention At the end I will introduce introduce Health Claims and Dietary Recommendations of fish oil. These figure is talking about the different percentage of metabolic syndrome in the whole world. According to this picture, we can see metabolic syndrome already become a whole world health issue even at Antarctica.

In tha Asia the percentage of metabolic syndrome increase year by year especially in Taiwan. Because in Taiwan, our diet become more like western diet compare with before. Taiwanese do not have time to do activity that much. So we should take the health issue more seriously So, what is metabolic syndrome? There are some criteria for clinical diagnosis. The first one is elevated waist circumference. The cut points are population and country specific. For example in Taiwan, male waist circumference should below 90cm, female should under 80CM centimeter. The second criteria is elevated at a level of triglyceride. The Cup point is 150 microgram per deal The third one is reduce HDL-C which is high density lipoprotein class or on the therapy already.

There is gender different for the cut points for male the cut point is under 40mg/dl , for female is under 50mg/dl The forth is elevated blood pressure or on the therapy SBP Larger than or equal to 130 mm/mercury and/or DBP Larger than or equal to 85mm/mercury The last one is elevated fasting glucose or on the therapy already fasting glucose Larger than or equal to 100mg/dl If you have 3 or more of these traits you should consider your health because you have risk to have metabolic syndrome Waist circumference is a very important criterion for metabolic syndrome. We can see the left side of this picture. If excess amount of fat is accumulated above waist line, for example, in belly region.

We call this type of obesity, apple sharped obesity. It’s associated with excess visceral and subcuteaneous fat. Most commonly associated with metabolic syndrome, and related health problems. In the right side of this picture, it’s pear shaped obesity. The excess amount of fat is accumulated below waist line. It associated less commonly with metabolic syndrome, related health issues. This figure is talking about the pathophysiology of the metabolic syndrome. From the bottom of this picture, we can see Genetic predisposition, decreased physical activity, and western diet which is a diet low in fiber and high in saturated fats leads to increased visceral adiposity.

The visceral adipose tissue secretes inflammatory cytokines and adipokines which are (leptin, resistin, interleukin-6, plasminogen-activator inhibitor-1, and tumor necrosis factor-α) Which is TNF α. as well as non-esterified fatty acids. These factors create insulin resistance at the level of the skeletal muscle and liver leading to hyperinsulinemia, which contributes to endothelial dysfunction and atherogenesis. The fatty acids also alter hepatic lipid production toward a more atherogenic profile which are (low high-density lipoprotein, elevated low-density lipoprotein, and elevated triglycerides). Taken as a whole, the increased visceral adipose tissue play important role to make up the metabolic syndrome. So, let’s make a conclusion, metabolic syndrome is not a disease. Its just contain some syndromes.

But it related to a lot of disorders like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, osteoporosis, inflammation diseases. If people can control waist circumference, the level of TG, HDL-c, blood glucose and blood pressure, that can avoid having some sever diseases in the future.