Preventive Medicine: Our Economy's Foe, Our People's Hero

Vaccination and Sanitation. These two measures have prevented more deaths in the written history of humanity. Each of these were prophylactic (preventative) measures, which have saved countless lives.

Metabolic syndrome is a clinical term for a combination of signs and symptoms,, which causes increased morbidity ( ie., cerebrovascular accident/stroke, coronary artery disease/heart disease, among other) and mortality(death).

The importance of recognizing this is due to the high prevalence of obesity (40% of adults and 20% of children) in modern American society.

Risk factors include increased abdominal waist size, poor nutrition, physical inactivity, obesity and unfortunately genetics. Other factors include an elevated blood pressure and cholesterol.

From a clinical standpoint, preventing metabolic syndrome could reduce the morbidity and mortality for our population. From a public health standpoint, it would reduce the financial burden of these patients to the American health care system(which currently encompasses 18.3% of the GDP).

Simple measures like regular exercise, weight reduction(via pharmaceutical and non pharmaceutical options), stress reduction and healthy eating habits can reduce the risk of metabolic syndrome.

Yours Truly,

Ken Okafor, MD

Chief Medical Advisor

Tylmen Tech