Understanding and Assessing Metabolic Health PH146

This edition of Pursuing Health Pearls will build on our last edition about COVID-19 and our Health. In that edition, we revealed that only 12.2% of our population is optimally metabolically healthy, and a lot of metabolic dysfunction goes undiagnosed.Good metabolic health is a state of being in which the biochemical processes in the body that regulate blood sugar and lipids are operating normally. There are many definitions of metabolic dysfunction, but all involve abnormal regulation of blood sugar and lipids as well as systemic inflammation. If metabolic dysfunction is left unaddressed, it can ultimately lead to a range of common chronic diseases and causes of death such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.Here, we’ll review how metabolic dysfunction develops, what is actually happening in our bodies that sets the stage for chronic disease, and how to assess metabolic health so that this dysfunction can be detected and addressed early.