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What Are the Implications of Metabolic Syndrome on Heart Disease?

Summary & Participants

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that can increase a person's risk of developing heart disease. Learn more about this syndrome and how it affects the heart.

Medically Reviewed On: July 11, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions affecting the body's metabolism.

GEORGE A. BELLER, MD, MACC, MACC: Metabolic syndrome is a medical entity which involves being overweight, but predominantly in the abdomen, having a lot of fat in the abdominal, you know, area, as opposed to just being fat everywhere. It's associated with high blood pressure, an elevated cholesterol with high triglycerides, it's called, and a low HDL cholesterol, which is the good cholesterol. And it also is associated with -- it can be associated with an abnormal blood sugar that predicts ultimately that that person may get diabetes.

ANNOUNCER: Any one of these conditions alone can be dangerous but when combined, the risk of developing further health complications increases very quickly.

SUZANNE HUGHES, MSN, RN: Now, the implications of this for heart disease is that having the metabolic syndrome effectively doubles one's risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

GEORGE A. BELLER, MD, MACC: And so the implications of having it is that you have to reverse these abnormalities to reduce the risk of, then, heart disease with appropriate medications and lifestyle changes.

If someone is diagnosed with the metabolic syndrome, the first intervention is lifestyle change, and we would advise patients with this problem to reduce their calories, to get on a good diet and to start exercising so they could lose that weight. Because even losing just 10% of your weight will result in a marked reduction in the risk of a heart attack.

We also put patients on medications to lower the blood pressure. We put them on medications to lower the bad cholesterol and to raise the good cholesterol. And we essentially will follow those patients carefully, and if they develop any symptoms of heart disease, we will go on with stress testing and other treatments.