Metabolic Syndrome Doubles Heart Risk, Analysis Shows

The combination of metabolic syndrome risk factors -- including obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and insulin resistance -- increases the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes. And about 25 percent of American adults have metabolic syndrome, according to the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

In the new analysis, researchers examined more than 70 recent studies that included a total of nearly one million patients. The investigators found that people with metabolic syndrome are up to 2.5 times more likely to die of heart-related causes and to have heart disease, a heart attack or stroke, compared to people without the syndrome.
"Ultimately, population-level interventions such as New York City's ban on trans-fats are needed to decrease the number of people with the metabolic syndrome and their corresponding cardiovascular risk," Eisenberg said in the news release.

Most of the Americans Do not Get Daily Exercise

Only about 5 percent of American adults do some type of energetic physical activity on any given day, according to the results of a new study. Researchers analyzed 2003-2008 data from nearly 80,000 participants, aged 20 and older, in the American Time Use study, a national telephone-based poll that asked people what they did in the preceding 24 hours.
Most respondents reported sedentary activities such as eating and drinking (95.6 percent) and watching television/movies (80.1 percent), or light behavior such as washing, dressing and grooming (78.9 percent), and driving a car, truck or motorcycle (71.4 percent).
The most regularly reported moderate activities were food and drink preparation (25.7 percent) and lawn, garden and houseplant care (10.6 percent), lead investigator Catrine Tudor-Locke, director of the Walking Behavior Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., and colleagues found. Only 5 percent of respondents reported vigorous physical activities, including using cardiovascular exercise equipment (2.2 percent) and running (1.1 percent).
The survey findings are published online and in the October print issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. On any given day, most U.S. adults reported performing mostly sedentary and light activities. The greatest frequency for reported moderate activities was food and drink preparation for both men (12.8 percent) and women (37.6 percent)," the authors wrote in the report.