Metabolic Testing

Metabolic Testing

Knowing where your metabolism stands is a great place to start when trying to condition it to be faster and more efficient. Having your metabolism tested will allow you to know exactly how many calories you need to eat in order to fuel your body throughout the day, tell you where your body burns calories at specific heartrate zones, and calculate your VO2 max.

Calorie intake is important because not eating enough will slow down your metabolism resulting in weight gain, and overeating will also result in weight gains as well. Where you’re burning calories in your workouts can be tested through an Active Metabolic Assessment, and will tell you out of the five heartrate zones, where your body burns fat most efficiently with specific numbers tailored to your body.

This way, you can eat a proper amount of food to fuel your workouts, and spend your workout time in your fat burning zones without any guessing when you step on the treadmill or other cardio equipment.

Some people eat way too few calories and over exercise at too high of an intensity – resulting in depleted energy levels, and more resistance to fat loss. Your VO2 max is the amount of oxygen that your body takes in when exercising, and is a good indicator of your level of cardiovascular endurance.

More cardio performed at lower zones will grow your aerobic base, which will result in a better VO2 max, and help train your metabolism to stay in fat burning zones much longer as you exercise.

Retesting your metabolism quarterly is recommended so that you can progress your training and continue to shape your metabolism into a fat burning machine inside and outside of the gym.

When you retest after training, your VO2 max should increase resulting in longer workouts. Your fat burning zones should be achievable for longer amounts of time, and your body will burn more fat throughout the day rather than just burning the carbs and sugars that you consume.

If you’re exercising on a budget, try to see if your insurance or health savings accounts will cover your assessments because it’s medical related. There are other methods to testing your metabolism through free online calculators that, although they’re not perfectly accurate, they do provide a much better educated guess on where to start your training.

Don’t rely on fad diets and extreme exercises to lose weight. Instead train your body to work more efficiently and burn fat for you. Metabolic testing takes all the guesswork out of the equation and gives you a strong foundation on which you can succeed.

Metabolic Syndrome

Metabolic Syndrome

Metabolism plays a big factor that not enough people think about when it comes to their health. Metabolic syndrome is a collection of three or more risk factors that are present because of the body’s inability to burn food properly throughout the day, or when exercising.

When the body can’t burn food as a fuel properly, it stores more fat – typically at nighttime – and when people exercise, they burn the food they eat as energy rather than fat cells.

Most people assume a fast metabolism is for skinny people and slow metabolism makes it hard to lose weight, but an unbalanced metabolism has more risk factors than just weight.

People with slow metabolisms are at a higher risk for increased blood pressure, high cholesterol, and insulin resistance – which all can lead to more diseases. Weight, age, race, diabetes and other factors all play a role in how your metabolism functions, and typically those who are older, out of shape, and have poor lifestyle choices run a higher risk for metabolic diseases.

The reason thinner people have a higher metabolism is because their body naturally burns fat on its own, which is why some people can eat thousands of calories and not gain a pound.

Just because you may have a slower metabolism, it doesn’t mean that you can’t change it. Better nutrition choices, more water, and consistent exercise is a great way to improve metabolic function to help your body burn fat more efficiently.

If you have the money to invest in your health, you can call your doctor about getting your metabolism tested. Active metabolic assessments will show you how your body burns fuel – whether it burns carbs or fats during your workouts at different heartrate zones

Resting metabolic assessments are great for knowing how your body burns fuel outside of your time spent working out. If you don’t wish to invest in an assessment, there are free calculations such as the bronze method that can be done at no cost online for an educated guess.

Knowing where to start is a crucial part of improving your metabolism and preventing metabolic syndrome because everyone has a different heartrate zone to begin with. After about two to three months of changing to healthier eating habits, staying hydrated, and conditioning, your metabolism – through easy to moderate intensity cardio – should start to show improvements in how your body burns fat.

Increasing your metabolism will not only help you slim down faster and prevent a plethora of diseases, but it will give you more energy and an overall more enjoyable and active life.

How to Adjust Your Life to Avoid Metabolic Syndrome

With a metabolic syndrome diagnosis, it’s imperative that you make some lifestyle adjustments to avoid the development of serious diseases which can interfere with your lifestyle and shorten your lifespan.

If you’ve lived a life of inactivity and are obese, you’re likely to develop metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is linked to insulin resistance, which stems from your digestive system’s inability to break down the foods you eat and produce sugar (glucose).

The result in this inability is that your glucose levels rise because your body can’t control the glucose and keeps secreting more insulin. When your body becomes unable to produce enough insulin to keep the glucose at normal levels, diabetes may develop.

When you’re given a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome from your health care provider, it means that you have several conditions at once – high blood sugar, excess fat surrounding the waist, abnormal cholesterol levels and high blood pressure.

All of these conditions, when occurring at the same time, can increase your risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke – but being diagnosed with one of the conditions doesn’t indicate that you have metabolic syndrome.

It does, however, mean that you’re at greater risk for these diseases. You’re at risk for metabolic syndrome if you fit into one or all of the categories below:

Over the age of 60
Hispanic or Asian
Diabetes during pregnancy or a family history of type 2 diabetes
Have or had nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, polycystic ovary syndrome or cardiovascular disease
Obesity (especially fat around the stomach area)

You can make aggressive changes in your lifestyle to prevent these metabolic syndrome diseases by adjusting your diet and exercise to lose weight and lower the harmful levels causing the problems.

Seniors should be on the lookout for symptoms of metabolic syndrome to avoid developing serious health problems. A low-caloric and low-carbohydrate diet plan can help you lose weight and a good regimen of exercise can help sculpt your body back into shape and burn the calories you do consume.

Include cardiovascular and stretching exercises for an overall workout of the body’s muscles and for good bone health. See your healthcare provider for a metabolic syndrome test if you have the symptoms of increased thirst, frequent urination, extreme fatigue and blurred vision. Also see your doctor if you have a large waist circumference. An “apple” shape of the body usually indicates a metabolic problem.

What is Metabolic Syndrome and What Does It Mean for Your Health?

What is Metabolic Syndrome and What Does It Mean for Your Health?

If you are wondering exactly what metabolic syndrome is you may have heard the term from a doctor, or perhaps a friend or family member. When a patient is diagnosed by a physician with metabolic syndrome, and they ask, “what is metabolic syndrome,” they are actually wondering exactly how it is going to affect their health.

Any time your metabolism is affected positively or negatively, there is an immediate correlation in your body. Your metabolic process regulates many body functions and performances that in turn dictate your level of health. Let’s start off with a definition of metabolic syndrome to get a little better understanding of how it affects your health.

What Exactly Is Metabolic Syndrome?

The Mayo Clinic is a globally respected health and wellness institution. They define metabolic syndrome as a group of conditions which exist together. When you experience them, your risk of developing heart disease and diabetes, or experiencing a stroke, are elevated greatly. Those conditions are …

• A high blood sugar level
• Low HDL levels (good cholesterol)
• High blood pressure
• Too much body fat around your midsection
• Excessively high levels of triglycerides

How Does Metabolic Syndrome Affect Your Health?

If you have any of these conditions, you should probably consider a healthy solution. If you possess only one of the risk factors just mentioned you may not develop metabolic syndrome. However, if 2 or more of the traditional metabolic syndrome symptoms are present, you raise your risk risk of developing the following cardiovascular diseases:

• Stroke
• Hypertension
• Ischemic heart disease
• Rheumatic heart disease
• Atrial fibrillation
• Congenital heart failure
• Cardiomyopathy
• Endocarditis
• Peripheral artery disease

All of those conditions can lead to heart failure, and even death. That is why it is important to contact your physician as soon as you show multiple metabolic syndrome symptoms.

How to Treat or Beat Metabolic Syndrome

Doctors notice fewer symptoms of metabolic syndrome in healthy, active individuals that enjoy a nutritious diet. Eat foods with high calcium, magnesium and vitamin D levels. Keep your weight in check. Stand more and sit less. Stay active as much as possible. Cut back on saturated fats, and eliminate deadly trans fats altogether.

Regarding exercise, any time that you physically exert yourself 50% to 75% of your maximum, you are doing your body and your health a lot of good. This can be as simple as enjoying a 15 minute brisk walk around your neighborhood with a friend. Playing with your children or grandchildren is also a form of exercise. Any physical activity that that gets your heart pumping and blood and oxygen flowing through your body can help lower your risk of developing metabolic syndrome, and experiencing the heart diseases it can lead to if left untreated.