By Rajen M.

I HATE being fat. I'm sure you do, too!

It makes you look and feel bad. You may even have low self-esteem, and you're reminded of it every time you look in the mirror. What's more, as you age, being overweight increases your chances of falling, and staying, ill!

Excess weight and obesity linked to insulin resistance are often the underlying causes of the cluster of cardiovascular risk factors sometimes also called Metabolic Syndrome, or Syndrome X. There are many symptoms of this syndrome, but the most obvious is a big belly.

Both men and women are vulnerable to developing Syndrome X if they have at least three of these symptoms:

• Excess abdominal fat - a 40-inch waist or larger for men, and 35 inches or larger for women
• High blood sugar - at least 110 milligrams per decilitre (mg/dL)
• High triglyceride level - at least 150mg/dL in the blood stream
• Low HDL "good" cholesterol - less than 40mg/dL for men, and 50mg/dL for women
• High blood pressure - 130/85 or higher

And data suggests that one in five Malaysians do.

I work hard and live well not to be one of them, and I hope you do, too.

The process

Insulin resistance underlies excess weight and obesity by vastly reducing the number of receptor sites on the wall of each cell. These sites act as "a key in a lock", allowing glucose, or sugar, to pass through the cell wall and get converted into energy. But the reduced number of receptor sites causes sugar to "bounce" off the cell wall and free-float in the blood stream to the liver. Once there, this excess sugar is converted into fat and stored through the blood stream throughout the body.

This process often leads to obesity, a key factor in the onset of Syndrome X, which can also increase the risk of blood clot formation and reduce the kidneys' ability to remove salt from the blood. This, of course, causes inflammation that damages the cardiovascular system.

The Worldwatch Institute, in its report Overfed and Underfed: The Global Epidemic of Malnutrition, examined the real costs of obesity related to poor diet - and this does not include the other effects of poor diet such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, auto-immune disease and even osteoporosis. Some of its shocking conclusions:

• Obese people account for a disproportionate share of health-related absenteeism from work.
• Obesity accounts for seven per cent of lost productivity due to sick leave and disability.
• Obese people visit their physicians 40 per cent more than normal-weight people.
• Obese people are 2.5 times more likely to need drugs prescribed for cardiovascular and circulation disorders.
• Liposuction is the No. 1 form of cosmetic surgery in the United States, with 400,000 operations done every year.
• Over 100,000 people a year have gastric bypass surgery.

Costly affair

According to a recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine, Americans spend about US$20,000 (S$27270) per person for each extra year of life gained from medical interventions such as drugs and surgeries. And that doesn't take into account the US$282 billion (S$384 billion) in costs resulting from medical interventions gone wrong - hospital infections, medical errors, deaths from drug reactions, unnecessary surgeries.

As these numbers prove, the cost of eating fast, junk and processed foods is often deferred until later. And that's a key point: When you go to a fast food outlet for burger and fries, you may immediately compare its lower price to "expensive" organic food.

But the total cost isn't reflected by how much you pay for your meal in the immediate term, it's the cumulative cost of what those decisions cost you over a lifetime.

For example, when you eat unhealthy foods, the total cost from medical visits, prescription medications and other health services skyrockets. Then there are the non-economic costs of eating poorly - increased fatigue, obesity, depression.

The biggest advantage of eating well now is not just preventing disease and costs later, but simply enjoying each day to its fullest. And eating well doesn't have to cost more. If left unchecked, Syndrome X places a person at higher risk of a heart attack or stroke. The condition has also been linked to the onset of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (a leading cause of infertility in women), pre-diabetes and certain cancers such as prostate cancer in men.

Making the change

At present, there's no single pill that can reverse excess weight and obesity, just as there isn't any pharmaceutical drug that can cure Syndrome X. But there are ways to address insulin resistance, which is often the underlying cause.

If you want to return to optimum health, consider a system that combines nutraceuticals (vitamins, herbs and minerals that are disease-specific), a realistic exercise programme, nutritional guidance and a support system that will help you avoid unhealthy lifestyle choices.

Enter vinyldithiins

Belgian scientists recently developed superior high-yielding varieties of garlic. These new varieties yield higher actives of garlic such as vinyldithiins and sulfides. These compounds are easily lost when subjected to higher heat and pressures that typical extraction protocols would expect.

That's why the garlic mixture is extracted using super-critical fluid extraction technology. Instead of using water or alcohol in room or higher temperatures, extraction happens at very low temperatures using liquid carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

At such temperatures, where nitrogen and carbon dioxide are liquid, they are mixed with the pulverised garlic and "extracted". As the temperature goes up, the liquid nitrogen and carbon dioxide basically move from the liquid to gas phase. But the extracted high-value garlic compounds remain.

This extract is naturally rich in vinyldithiins and sulfides. Extracts rich in vinyldithiins are now available in pharmacies. These vinyldithiins sulfides (particularly dillyldisulfide and triallytrisulfide) have a powerful effect in inhibiting the enzyme HMG-CoA reductase - the enzyme implicated in cholesterol synthesis.

Many major cholesterol-lowering drugs work by also inhibiting this enzyme. Vinyldithiins, in particular, has strong potential as an anti-thrombotic (anti-clot forming agent).

In the field of molecular biology, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) are a group of nuclear receptor proteins that function as transcription factors regulating the expression of genes.

They play an essential role in the regulation of cellular differentiation, development and metabolism (carbohydrate, lipid, protein), and tumorigenesis of higher organisms.

They also have a powerful indirection on insulin and inflammation. Vinyldithiins is said to be capable of affecting PPARs in the liver by up to 40 per cent.

This ultimately affects the deposit of fats in cells and critical organs. It may also help quell inflammation and improve the overall symptoms of Syndrome X.

-New Straits Times