Most Americans don’t realize how much metabolic health impacts their hearts. In fact, we’ve reached a point where feeling unwell is just a normal part of daily life, and not a warning sign of things to come.
There are countless studies connecting metabolic health and heart disease. Thankfully, it’s mostly good news — many diseases of the heart can be managed or even prevented with sustained metabolic health.
It starts with understanding the basics.
The mechanisms of heart damage
The mechanism of heart disease is strongly related to metabolic health, or, to be more accurate, the lack thereof.
The main incident for heart disease is damage to the blood vessel walls. Tight or ridged vessels are strongly correlated to poor metabolic health, which is why metabolic syndrome is considered a precursor to heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiac events.
There are two factors that negatively affect our blood vessels: blood sugar and physical inflammation.
Let’s examine these more closely.
Blood sugar
Everything we eat is converted into sugar in the blood. There may be a difference in the rate sugar is released (such as with low-glycemic foods like berries), but all foods consumed will elevate your glucose in some fashion.
Thankfully, this isn’t a cause for alarm. A properly functioning metabolism and healthy diet support the body’s ability to clear excess sugar and reduce strain on the vessels.
This is accomplished in several ways:
- Sugar can be immediately used for energy on the cellular level.
- Glucose can be stored in short term cells such as glycogen in the liver or the muscles. The rest is kept in long-term storage with fat cells in the stomach.
- You can burn excess sugar during physical exertion.
An unhealthy metabolic system cannot accomplish these tasks effectively. In context of the American diet, it’s likely you’re eating a large amount of sugar and processed carbohydrates. These high dietary levels may exceed the body’s ability to remove sugar from the blood, and your glucose levels may skyrocket over time.
If you can’t get sugar out of your bloodstream properly, your body will enter a state of insulin resistance. Cells can no longer swell to accommodate excess sugar and stop responding to insulin — leading to decreased elasticity, narrowed vessels, and impeded blood flow.
Inflammation
The second mechanism of metabolic heart disease is inflammation. Sugar in the blood is the most common origin, but factors like smoking and chronic stress can also damage the blood vessel walls.
Inflammation refers to your body’s attempt to repair organ or tissue damage. To do this, the body swells to protect weakened areas and releases cholesterol to repair damaged structures — including problems caused by excess blood sugar.
The problem here is not the inflammation itself. Rather, it’s the issue of remaining inflamed for long periods of time. Constant swelling keeps your body in a state of alert, and waxy cholesterol deposits can restrict your blood flow over time. This will damage your vessel walls and leave you more susceptible to heart disease in the future.
As a side note, getting rid of cholesterol completely is neither possible nor advisable. When we lower cholesterol with medication, all we do is lessen our reparative response — not resolve the root of the issue. As a result, even people on cholesterol medication remain in high risk brackets for heart disease.
You can see the cycle here as plain as day:
- Excess sugar in the blood causes damage to the blood vessel walls
- This results in higher levels of inflammation, also damaging vessels
- The body becomes insulin resistant and produces excess cholesterol
- Your risks for heart disease grow exponentially and may worsen over time
- A heart attack or cardiac event may damage your heart and increase future risks
Blood vessel walls are continuously damaged while plaque builds up in arteries and veins. When blood can no longer reach your heart effectively, you may experience a heart attack resulting in tissue death or complete organ failure — either of which will be extremely life-threatening.
How to improve metabolic health for heart disease
Heart disease doesn’t happen overnight. The event itself may feel quick in the moment, but in reality, it takes quite a lot of time for damages to accrue.
However, it’s by no means impossible to prevent or repair heart damage over time — even after a cardiac event.
- The first step is to stop self-inflicting damage to your heart. This means lowering your sugar intake, finding outlets for exercise, and choosing whole, real foods that slow the conversion of sugar in your blood.
- Next, you’ll want to make some non-dietary lifestyle changes. Focus on getting more sleep, controlling workplace stress, and quitting your smoking habit altogether. All of this will help you better manage chronic inflammation.
- Finally, you may want to work with a metabolic health coach to interpret lab results, suggest blood panels, and keep an eye on your progress over time.
Improving your metabolic health lets you optimize the functions you already have. If you stop damaging the rest of your heart and allow the muscle to perform their best, you’ll minimize your dangers and future risks — even if you can’t undo specific areas of damage.
And the sooner you do this, the better outcomes you’ll have.
Learning more about metabolic health
Good metabolic health is a powerful tool in preventing heart disease. If you’re interested in learning more on your own, or if you’d like to jumpstart your knowledge with more technical discussions, you can sign up for metabolic health courses to complete at your own pace.