1 in 3 Americans has this potentially deadly syndrome — and most don’t know it

1 in 3 Americans has this potentially deadly syndrome — and most don’t know it

Metabolic syndrome can lead to stroke and heart disease -- and you might not even be aware that you have it.

A new study has found that about a third of all U.S. adults has what is known as metabolic syndrome, which is a series of health conditions that involves having too much abdominal fat and high blood pressure, which can lead to stroke and heart disease.

The study determine that metabolic syndrome in the U.S. had jumped from 32.9 percent in 2003-04 to 34.7 percent in 2011-12, according to a Los Angeles Times report. The study was published in the journal JAMA and used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The good news is that it’s stabilized — it hasn’t been rising in recent years. The bad news is that’s still a lot of Americans.

Basically, a person has metabolic syndrome if they have three of the checkmarks for it: a large waist, a high number of triglyceries, low levels of “good” HDL cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high fasting blood sugar, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Many of these conditions stem from one thing: obesity.

By having metabolic syndrome, a person’s risk of getting a stroke, coronary heart disease, or even diabetes increases dramatically, and because it affects one-third of Americans, many people who have it don’t realize it, meaning they could die a sudden premature death if significant changes to their lifestyles aren’t made.

Metabolic syndrome tends to be more common in women, with 37 percent of them having it in 2011-12 comapred to men at 33 percent. Ethnically, Latinos were most likely to have it at 39 percent, followed by whites at 37 percent and African Americans at 36 percent.

But perhaps the biggest factor is ae, with just 18 percent of Americans between 20 and 39 having the condition, as opposed to a whopping 47 percent of those who were at least 60 years old.

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