In the last couple posts, I talked about the problem Sync will help our customers overcome: metabolic dysfunction, as a result of an underlying unhealthy lifestyle. If you ask me how big this problem is, I’ll tell you it’s massive-big.
Let’s look at what the World Health Organisation reports: Almost 2 billion adults worldwide are overweight or obese right now. Two billion! On top, 40 million children suffer from the same condition. All of these people are, by definition, on the brink of developing a number of diseases, from diabetes and cardiovascular disease, to several types of cancer and musculoskeletal disorders, along with mental diseases.
Actually, there is nearly a 40 percent chance that you are prediabetic, and more than a 9 percent chance that you actually have diabetes right now—a number that has nearly doubled since 2014. The worst part is that these numbers grow at an accelerated pace each year.
But there’s another condition which is not that visible and for that reason, it’s sometimes called “the silent killer”; its name? Insulin resistance. It’s a condition in which your body becomes desensitized to the effects of insulin, one of the body’s most important hormones that regulate our blood sugar. When you develop this condition, more insulin is required than before to get sugar out of your blood and into your cells, while at the same time your cells become numb to its effects.
You may not know you have this condition until you have already suffered damage for many years, because you can’t feel your glucose levels until they become extremely disrupted. Insulin resistance develops when you have way too many glucose spikes in your blood because of food, but the problem is you can’t measure it. If you can’t measure it, you can’t change it. Insulin resistance and high blood sugar are the cause of so many diseases that soon follow after it (the “visible” part of the condition when it’s often too late ): Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Heart disease, Parkinson’s, Diabetes, Infertility, and many more. According to a (US-based only) study, insulin resistance potentially affects up to 88% of adults in the US.
Why such big numbers? Why do so many people suffer from obesity or insulin resistance? Is it that they don’t care about their health, or that they don’t want to follow a good diet? For most people, it’s not true. Up until recently, the effort of science has been to find the optimal diet which will act as generic guidance and most people have been following such guidance, sometimes religiously. But recent advances in science have proven that each body responds to the same foods differently, and that’s why many times this guidance has been absolutely confusing. Watch this video, it’s revealing on how people could easily get confused and give up:
So what should we do to improve our metabolic health? Mainly, we need to select foods that don’t cause large spikes in glucose. But also we need to exercise consistently, get quality sleep, manage stress, add in nutrients and foods that improve our processing of glucose, and finally avoid environmental toxins that are known to disrupt our metabolism.
But it all starts with measuring what we put in our body and understanding what works for us. By measuring our blood glucose levels with the help of a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM and the Sync reporting system we’ll have made a head-start towards:
Stable and sustained energy throughout the day
Fat burning ability and healthy weight
Stable mood, and lowered risk of depression
Sharp memory
Improved sexual health
An improved immune system
Lower risk of all the chronic diseases mentioned above, and many more
Sync’s blog and social media properties (don’t forget to subscribe!) will publish more and more content about how controlling and improving metabolic health will improve our life on so many levels. We’ll publish posts and interviews from experts in the field and practitioners that prove all the above with a vast and growing amount of data and evidence.
Your feedback is welcome.