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While many Americans have a vague idea of what metabolism is, far fewer are aware of how dependent the human body is on a healthy metabolism to ward off a host of modern chronic diseases and health issues. Metabolism is upstream of many of the chronic diseases that cost society the most, and a deeper understanding of metabolic structures and processes may be able to help us prevent them.

Simply put, metabolic health is total body health — the combination of ideal levels of blood sugar, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference, without using medications. Metabolism is a collection of all of the chemical and cellular reactions that produce and store energy from food in the human body. When these processes don’t work the way they should, people often develop something known as metabolic syndrome.

Metabolic syndrome is diagnosed when a person has three or more of these common characteristics or ailments: High blood glucose (sugar), low levels of HDL (“good”) cholesterol in the blood, high levels of triglycerides in the blood, large waist circumference, or high blood pressure. Bad news, and according to a recent study only 12 percent of Americans are metabolically healthy.

The fact is, being metabolically unhealthy greatly increases a person’s odds of developing chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, or cardiovascular disease. Hence, the need to solve for this disconnect.

The Role of Metabolic Testing

While the symptoms that diagnose metabolic unhealthiness are important baseline metrics, they don’t tell the entire story of metabolic health and wellness. Using other standards and tests, we can accurately predict the transition towards metabolic unhealthiness and the development of disease before any of the outward symptoms surface.

People who are worried about their metabolic health can start with an intermittent fasting window of around 14 hours between their last nighttime meal and their breakfast meal.

Most standard metabolic tests that patients might receive at their yearly check-up with their primary care doctor don’t pick up a significant portion of metabolic unhealthiness pre-indicators. For example, a continuous glucose monitoring test picks up roughly 15 percent more pre-diabetics than standard testing. Looking at these earlier biomarkers is crucial to giving doctors and patients the most information which they can act on before problems fully manifest. Each individual has unique patterns for processing food and breaking it down into glucose. Because of the level of individuality involved, it’s becoming more clear that individual medium-term glucose monitoring can flag future issues that might not show up on standard tests.

While the conventional wisdom of the past was to wait to deal with diabetes until you were diagnosed, this is no longer the best strategy. In addition to this, pre-diabetes itself comes with a host of other immediate health risk increases, such as kidney dysfunction, cardiovascular disease, and coronary heart disease.

Solving for Metabolic Health Starts with the Food We Eat

People who are worried about their metabolic health can start with an intermittent fasting window of around 14 hours between their last nighttime meal and their breakfast meal. This can help the body stabilize glucose levels and deal with other spikes that may happen throughout the day.

Further, talking to a professional who deals with metabolic health issues can help patients understand where on the road to metabolic collapse they are. Because the symptoms of metabolic unhealthiness only present after a substantial amount of damage has been done, it can be useful to use preventative measures. For instance, a simple cholesterol panel at the patient’s next routine check-up can also be a good starting point to help them figure out whether they are on the road toward becoming insulin resistant.

Eating fewer refined carbohydrates and sugars is also a great way to minimize the overall risk of developing insulin resistance as you age. And moving from processed foods to eating a mostly unprocessed diet can go a long way toward staving off pre-diabetes.

The Role of Technology in Metabolic Health

All that said, a number of new technologies are coming down the pipeline that will allow medical professionals and patients to track real-time insulin levels and better address their metabolic health. This could be game-changing for detecting pre-diabetes even earlier and give participants even more data to work with.

For one thing, we’re watching a number of companies that are working on other biomarkers like inflammatory cytokine levels, cortisol levels, and uric acid levels that could help doctors see more of the full metabolic picture. By developing tests for those biomarkers, we could soon unlock even more information about our metabolic health.

Certainly, continuous glucose monitoring is a great place to start. Being able to monitor any biomarkers 24/7 illuminates the other dietary choices that affect metabolism and makes it easier for patients to make smart decisions about their diets and activity levels. The challenge here for innovators is in finding ways to monitor these molecule levels in real-time. It’s simply more difficult to do that for advanced biomarkers than it is for glucose, mostly because they are larger, requiring different sensors to give real-time data. However, a number of companies are working on convenient ways to do this, and hopefully, these new types of technologies will become widely available soon.