Metabolic syndromes such as diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and obesity are chronic conditions common among modern people. Diabetes, especially type 2 diabetes, is not simply a problem of organs such as the pancreas, liver, or stomach, but can be viewed as a metabolic syndrome caused by an overall metabolism and circulation disorder arising from abnormalities in the muscles, adipose tissue, blood vessels, and more.
These metabolic syndromes are chronic conditions that require management. They do not end with the disease itself; hypertension, hyperlipidemia, obesity, and related conditions may appear together in a vicious cycle. Therefore, lifestyle management such as diet control and exercise should be included starting now.
Accordingly, diabetes treatment at the Metabolic Disorders Clinic of Kyunghee Ryu Korean Medicine Clinic aims not only to lower blood sugar, but also to minimize vascular damage, reduce inflammation related to stress, and help discharge toxins accumulated in the body.
Diabetes Definition and Diagnosis of Diabetes
Diabetes is one of the representative diseases already affecting many people, to the extent that it accounts for 1/4 of the adult population in Korea. Recently, the number of people diagnosed with diabetes in their 20s and 30s has been increasing due to family history, dietary changes such as greasy foods and instant foods, and vascular aging and inflammation caused by lack of exercise. Even without a diabetes diagnosis, many people fall into prediabetes, meaning impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glucose. Prediabetes and impaired fasting glucose are considered to carry a higher risk of developing diabetes because the ability to metabolize glucose to maintain normal blood sugar is lower than in people with normal levels. Diabetes, especially acquired type 2 diabetes, refers to a fasting blood glucose level of 126mg/dL measured after 8 hours of fasting, or 200mg/dL or higher 2 hours after an oral glucose tolerance test. Prediabetes refers to a morning fasting blood glucose level of 100-125mg/dL. In addition, an indicator called glycated hemoglobin is used to diagnose diabetes. This is a test that checks how much sugar is attached to hemoglobin inside red blood cells. For glycated hemoglobin, a level of 5.7-6.4% is diagnosed as prediabetes, impaired glucose tolerance, or impaired fasting glucose, while 6.5% or higher is diagnosed as diabetes. However, it is not easy to check these levels routinely. Even if you have not been diagnosed with diabetes, you can suspect diabetes through its common symptoms, so it is important to have some knowledge of the symptoms of diabetes.
Symptoms and Complications of Diabetes
The most commonly known symptoms of diabetes include unexplained weight loss, sudden hunger, thirst, and frequent urination. Among diabetes symptoms, weight loss without any particular reason is more common than many people think, even when food intake has not decreased and the person is not dieting. When we eat food, the body breaks it down into glucose to obtain energy. If a problem occurs in this process, the body instead burns muscle or fat to make an energy source. As a result, because the body repeatedly tries to burn muscle or fat rather than using food, weight may decrease even with sufficient food intake. Many people also feel sudden hunger. In diabetes, there is a large amount of blood sugar circulating in the body, and the efficiency of using that blood sugar for energy is relatively reduced, so the body cannot use blood sugar well as energy. Therefore, even if you eat enough, blood sugar is not broken down properly in the body and residual blood sugar continues to circulate, making it easier to feel hungry.
In addition, you may often feel thirsty, drink water frequently, and urinate often. When the blood glucose level is high, more glucose in the blood moves to the kidneys. To excrete the glucose that has reached the kidneys through urine, water is also excreted along with it. Through this process, we naturally feel thirsty more often and drink water frequently.
If the symptoms above occur together, we recommend checking your blood sugar directly or visiting a nearby hospital for diabetes-related testing.
Diabetes Should No Longer Depend Only on Medication Metabolic syndromes such as diabetes, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and obesity cannot be overcome by relying only on drug therapy. In particular, in the case of type 2 diabetes caused by improper lifestyle management, glucose usually accumulates in the blood and raises blood sugar when insulin is insufficient or not secreted properly due to insulin resistance or other causes, and sugar is also excreted in the urine. At this time, drug treatment is taken as a hypoglycemic agent for the purpose of increasing insulin sensitivity and promoting insulin secretion so that insulin can be secreted more effectively and in greater amounts. Diabetes medications, which are hypoglycemic agents, are broadly classified into sulfonylureas (Sulfonylurea), biguanides (Biguanide), alpha-glucosidase inhibitors (α-Glucosidase Inhibitor), glinides (Glinide), thiazolidinediones (Thiazolidinediones), DPP-4 inhibitors (Dipeptidyl Peptidase-4 Inhibitor), and others. Most are known to have mechanisms that act on the pancreas, liver, muscles, and other tissues to induce insulin secretion or increase sensitivity to insulin to regulate blood sugar, or that affect digestive actions in the gastrointestinal tract to slow carbohydrate absorption and regulate blood sugar.
However, if you rely on these diabetes medications, it is easy at first to think that the diabetic condition has improved because blood sugar is controlled to some extent. If you depend on diabetes medication and do not pay attention to lifestyle management such as diet and exercise, the blood sugar level may appear stable externally, but the diabetic condition may not improve, pancreatic function may not recover, and other organs such as the stomach and liver, vascular condition, muscle condition, and the whole body may be negatively affected. In that case, there may be no particular symptoms at first, but typical symptoms may continue, such as becoming thirsty and drinking a lot of water, increased urine volume and frequency, and weight loss despite increased food intake. In addition, symptoms such as fatigue, indigestion, bloating, diarrhea, and constipation may occur, and diabetes-related complications such as diabetic retinopathy, diabetic kidney failure, peripheral neuritis, and diabetic foot can occur throughout the body from head to toe.
Type 2 diabetes is a representative example, but the same applies to other metabolic syndromes as well.
In addition, medications used to control these metabolic syndromes can involve tolerance and resistance. When tolerance and resistance to these medications increase, taking the same medications currently prescribed may not manage the condition as well as before, leading to elevated blood sugar, blood pressure, or cholesterol levels. As control becomes more difficult, the number of medications or their strength often ends up increasing.
The Most Serious Enemy of Diabetes: Diabetic Complications When diabetes progresses to some extent, vascular endothelial cells are damaged, reducing circulation in the peripheral microvessels. This may lead to eye-related symptoms such as blurred vision, unclear eyesight, and retinopathy. This is called diabetic retinopathy. In the same context, symptoms such as numbness in the fingertips and toes, swelling, fatigue, delayed wound healing, erectile dysfunction, dry skin, and itching may appear due to diabetes.
Diabetic neuropathy, diabetic foot ulcers, and diabetic nephropathy are representative complications. In particular, among diabetic complications, gastrointestinal symptoms such as indigestion, bloating, diarrhea, and constipation may occur. As diabetes progresses, it can cause peripheral nerve damage. Nerve damage related to gastrointestinal motility is also possible, and gastrointestinal symptoms may accompany nerve disorders, motility disorders, and bile absorption disorders in the gastrointestinal tract, so these possibilities require consideration and caution.
Mechanism of Chronic Inflammation and Vascular Damage Caused by Diabetes When blood sugar is not properly managed and diabetes progresses, vascular endothelial cells are damaged and injured, and blood cells in the blood lose their original functions. As a result, advanced glycation end products (AGEs, Advanced Glycated End products) accumulate in the body, aging and impairing the body, skin, and organs. Vascular damage accumulates in the body, and blood circulation becomes less smooth.
When a hyperglycemic state continues, with unnecessary glucose remaining in the blood vessels, overall metabolic function declines, and oxidative stress that interferes with insulin secretion through various interaction pathways develops and accumulates, producing reactive oxygen species (ROS, Reactive Oxygen Species) and related substances. These activate pathways for various inflammation-related factors, causing chronic inflammation to persist like a vicious cycle, and they also destroy the beta cells of the pancreas, reducing insulin secretion.
In addition, if high blood sugar persists or diabetes is not well controlled, toxins can build up in the body through blood vessel damage and chronic inflammation caused by oxidative stress. In addition, regularly eating refined carbohydrates such as flour-based foods, noodles, bread, pasta, and pizza, and not managing eating habits well, can also cause toxins to build up in the body, interfering with circulation and making fatigue come more easily. Ultimately, this can bring patients with diabetes closer to what they fear most: the simultaneous development of metabolic syndrome, including hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, abdominal visceral obesity, and fatty liver, as well as diabetic complications. Lower blood sugar, reduce inflammation, and clear the blood Metabolic syndrome, including diabetes, hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, and obesity, can be accompanied by various metabolism-related conditions such as insulin resistance, hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, and obesity, not only because of the diseases themselves, but also because of blood vessel damage, reduced blood circulation, chronic inflammation caused by stress, and toxic reactions that have built up in the body. For this reason, it is important not to rely only on medication, but to maintain good management through active treatment and lifestyle management so that you can live a healthy daily life while reducing dependence on medication.
Fundamentally, improvement is needed not only in blood sugar control, but also in metabolism-related conditions such as hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, and obesity, by minimizing blood vessel damage, reducing inflammation caused by oxidative stress and other forms of stress, and detoxifying the body by helping eliminate accumulated toxins. Through this, we provide treatment with the goal of lowering blood sugar, reducing inflammation, and improving blood clarity, so that patients may recover toward their previous healthy state.
Dietary and lifestyle care that best fits your constitution and current condition should be combined. Metabolic syndrome, including diabetes, hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, and obesity, progresses gradually, and unless there is an urgent situation, treatment also requires steady management by finding the diet and exercise method that best suits you.
For diabetes diet management, carbohydrates, the nutrient that most directly affects blood sugar, should be eaten in a limited way, while the other nutrients should be consumed evenly. It is also necessary to eat without rushing too much so that food is not suddenly absorbed in the body, and to eat at regular times. Managing the diet for metabolic syndrome as well as diabetes may sound easy, but it is never easy to keep up consistently.
Eating habits such as fasting by skipping meals or frequently eating snacks can easily lead to binge eating if not well managed. Therefore, it is important to maintain regular meals at set times and in set amounts whenever possible, and to make a diet that suits you into a habit. Refined carbohydrates such as white rice, noodles, bread, and pasta, as well as simple sugars rather than complex carbohydrates, such as sugar, cake, and chocolate, should be excluded as much as possible during meals, while other nutrients such as protein, fat, and dietary fiber should be consumed sufficiently and evenly.
For exercise methods, body weight differs depending on the state of diabetes or the constitution, so it is necessary to consider how far you are from a standard weight and consistently combine an exercise method that fits that.
Looking around, many people think that patients with diabetes must simply eat less and walk every day to survive. In fact, however, exercise methods should be applied differently depending on body weight, such as whether aerobic exercise like walking may be effective, whether anaerobic exercise like strength training may be effective, or whether a combined exercise plan should be used, in order to help manage metabolic syndrome.
In conclusion, management of metabolic syndrome can clearly improve when dietary and lifestyle care, including a diet and exercise plan that fits you, is combined. Through this dietary and lifestyle care, it can first help control blood sugar and also serve as a foundation for healthy daily life in the face of overall metabolism-related conditions such as hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, and obesity.