Читать книгу Sugar Addicts’ Diet - Nicki Waterman - Страница 45

Research at Leeds Metropolitan University in 2002 revealed that one in five British people may suffer from a condition called Syndrome X (also known as ‘sugar overload disorder’). With this condition, sufferers have constantly high blood-sugar levels because of a sugary diet. As a result, they have raised levels of fats (triglycerides) but low levels of ‘good’ HDL cholesterol in the blood, which increases the risk of heart disease. Importantly, they also have insulin resistance where the sugar-regulating hormone insulin becomes less capable of removing glucose from the blood. Instead it is stored as fat around the waist and upper body.

The result? If untreated, there’s an increased risk of developing Type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure. Professor Gerald Reaven of Stanford University, California, first coined the term Syndrome X in 1988. He called it the ‘silent killer’ because its early stages often go unnoticed and many people don’t even know they have it.