Mar 21, 2024

Importance of Metabolic Health for Healthy Living

By Aditi Tibarewala

Nutritionist, Diabetes Educator

Understanding metabolism
Importance of metabolic health
Approaches to better metabolic health
Key points
References

Healthy living is a dream of many. Everyone has unique metabolic health. Your age, sex, lifestyle, food choices, sleep, exercise, and gut microbiome decide your metabolic health. Maintaining a healthy body weight, blood glucose levels, and blood pressure have always been important. The recent pandemic has highlighted its importance, and people are now becoming more conscious of their health. But are you aware that your body's health status is closely connected with your metabolic health?

Want to know more about metabolic health? Stay tuned and keep reading!

Maintaining normal levels of body weight, blood pressure, blood glucose levels, waist circumference, and blood lipid levels without any medication signifies good metabolic health, crucial for overall well-being. However, the global prevalence of metabolic syndrome is high, affecting nearly 20-25% of adults worldwide, with approximately 2 billion individuals classified as overweight.

Obesity often leads to various metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes, hyperlipidemia, fatty liver disease, and hypertension. Understanding the significance of metabolic health is essential for adopting a healthy lifestyle and preventing associated health conditions.

Understanding Metabolism:

Metabolism is the process that breaks down food into energy and utilises this energy to build the body and perform functions. Simply, metabolism is your energy provider or fuel. If you have a fast metabolism, you need more calories, while a slow metabolism has lesser calorie requirements. Each one of us has a basal metabolic rate(BMR), minimum number of calories you need to perform body functions.

A disruption in the normal metabolism will result in a metabolic disorder. In recent times, metabolic disorders are growing like an epidemic worldwide.

Importance of metabolic health

Poor metabolic health means an imbalance in your basic metabolism. Although this may be due to hormonal disorders or sometimes inherited, there are certain factors, as given below, that indirectly affect your metabolic health:

Unhealthy lifestyle
Poor food choices
Lack of physical inactivity
Sleep disorders

All the above factors are responsible for putting your body under oxidative stress that results in inflammation and eventually leads to the accumulation of fat deposits.
The increased visceral fat (belly fat) increases your body weight, and the oxidative stress leads to an array of metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, heart diseases, increased cholesterol levels, PCOD in women (commonly referred to as polycystic ovarian disease), and thyroid problems.

Approaches toward a better metabolic health

Positive steps toward healthy weight loss, food control, and a nutritional diet will help you on the path to better metabolic health. The following tips will help you achieve healthy living:

Eat wisely: Your nutritional choices decide several things about your health. Here is what you should choose:

Consume a diverse and nutritional diet that includes fresh fruits, leafy green vegetables, healthy fats, whole grains to make up your carbohydrate requirement, and lean proteins.
Avoid excess sugar as it disrupts the balance of gut microorganisms and shoots calories. The disturbed intestinal microbiome (gut dysbiosis) is often associated with decreased immune function and metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes.
Maintain a healthy balance in your gut microorganisms by choosing prebiotics and probiotics nutritional supplements.
Do not ignore hunger. Eat when you are ideally hungry, frequent snacking and overeating are poor choices.
Nutritional supplements may compensate for the deficit of certain minerals and vitamins that aid digestion and promote metabolic health.

Physical activity: Current trends like gym workouts and crash diets are appealing but not sustainable. Crash diets often lead to muscle loss and ineffective long-term weight loss. On the other hand, the physical activities given below contribute to good metabolic health.

Engage in regular physical exercise, including walking, cardio activities, strength training, and high-intensity interval training (HIIT).
Aim for a balance between different forms of exercise to improve cardiovascular health, muscle strength, and overall well-being.

Maintain a healthy weight: Weight loss is key to restoring your metabolic health. A reduced calorie intake versus the calories burnt with nutritional food and exercise can help you maintain your average body weight.

Get adequate sleep : Your sleep should be sufficient and uninterrupted. Short and interrupted sleep is related to increased hunger, weight gain, and impaired metabolic health. Practice sleep hygiene by avoiding screens like TV, computers, and phones at least two hours before bedtime.

Try supplements to boost metabolism: Apart from making a change to your daily lifestyle habits, trying a supplement to boost your metabolism will put you on the right track!

A natural supplement like Berberine is considered a metabolism booster as it activates AMPK-activated protein kinase and makes our body function in a better way. It helps reduce the risk of developing metabolic syndrome by lowering bad cholesterol and insulin resistance.

Take away:

Adopting a healthy lifestyle, including mindful eating, regular physical activity, balanced nutrition, ample sleep, and maintaining a healthy weight, plays a crucial role in optimizing metabolic health and preventing metabolic diseases. Consider incorporating natural metabolism boosters like Berberine to support your journey towards better metabolic well-being.