CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF DENIAL

In medicine we look at a bunch of symptoms, physical findings, lab and x-ray results, and decide if a person is suffering from a particular disease, and then we prescribe treatment based upon what worked in the past in similar if not identical situations.

Fast forward to your own life today. Let's say you come from a large family and some of your close relatives have heart disease, diabetes, or other vascular problems like strokes, dementia, or poor circulation. Medical science has studied these things in great depth and concluded that diet, lifestyle, and exercise or lack thereof, along with stress, obesity, and smoking play a huge role. The expectation would be that an intelligent person would be able to synthesize an opinion as to whether they were "at risk" or not based on heredity and the information that hits us in the face all day everyday on TV, the internet, and every other source. Unless they were in DENIAL. Just like the alcoholic or the drug abuser who says "I don't have a problem" the person who is rushing headlong into Metabolic Syndrome says to him or her self "I don't have a problem" all evidence and the attempts of others to help to the contrary.

Metabolic Syndrome is a "package" of high blood pressure, impending cardiac abnormalities, abnormal insulin response, high cholesterol, and high triglyceride fats in the bloodstream that includes all of the ills of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease rolled into one. You can SEE IT COMING with basic blood tests and a physical exam. If your blood pressure is creeping up along with your body weight, and your cholesterol and triglycerides are on the rise, and your fasting blood sugar is too...within a few years, you are going to get sick. Like the guy on TV from the Men's Wearhouse says "I guarantee it."

Instead of being in DENIAL, accept these subtle messages from the lab and those physical signs of danger like Sleep Apnea, fatigue, or erectile dysfunction (blood vessel disease). Believe the messenger and DO SOMETHING NOW because once your fasting blood sugar goes above 120 and stays there, you are no longer pre-diabetic, and once you have to start taking every drug that Walgreen's sells for blood pressure, sugar control, ED, and congestive heart failure, it will be incredibly MORE DIFFICULT to regain your health and live a normal and or long life.

As in the rest of our human existence, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Leave De NILE in Egypt and face reality.