Could You Have Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic Syndrome?

And Why You Probably Have No Clue to That Answer

By Kevin Kolodziejski

While I was wondering why the American Heart Association felt the need to coin a new medical term — Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic syndrome — the oddest of analogies occurred to me. That eating is like professional tag-team wrestling.

The mind certainly makes weird leaps and links, eh? I mean, as a young teen I only I watched this make-believe mano-a-mano a few times because I didn’t find it at all entertaining. In my late teens, though, I was entertaining the idea that the pain and injuries sustained from eating “fake” foods — unlike pro wrestling — are for real and began eating mostly vegetables as a way to limit both.

Which concerned my parents, bothered a basketball coach enough to poke fun at me publicly, and caused at least one potential girlfriend to say, “See you later.”

How Eating Is Like Tag-Team Wrestling

But if an analogy is to be made between eating and tag-team wrestling, you’re both partners in the first endeavor, and the one named Brains doubles as your manager. He’s decided you’ll perform in the ring as Good Guys, chooses your opponents, and how often you’ll do battle.

When he schedules matches against Bad Guys, however, Brains quickly tags out. From the safety of the other side of the ropes, though, he will offer up his two cents incessantly as his buddy named Body gets knocked about.

Yet his two cents rarely help.

The Reason for the Unconventional Analogy

Now the reason to start with such an unconventional comparison is because too often the final outcome of what’s considered the conventional way of eating today reads just like the scripted bout when tag-team wrestling Good Guys go against Bad Guys. The first time. Invariably in the first encounter, one of the villains lifts Body above his head and slams him to the ground. He climbs to the top rope, does what looks like a cannonball from a diving board, drops atop Body’s chest, and drives an elbow into his throat.

He then punches him in the solar plexus, grabs his hair, and slams his head against the mat until the referee stops the bout.

In addition to being entertained (and I do use that term loosely), you as the viewer are supposed to feel outrage and desire revenge — enough that you’ll pay to see or tune into the rematch. And such intense feelings will indeed occur if you get lost in the moment and forget that what you’re witnessing is not legitimate wrestling but scripted writing.

Whose Eating ‘Script’ Are You Following?

Scripted writing, my friend, can be a powerful tool. When it comes to purchasing and consuming food, who’s the wordsmith of the one you follow? Is it the food companies specializing in stuff loaded with added sugars and fats in order to corrupt and control your taste buds?

While those questions need answers sooner than later, a related one is just as pressing and also serves as today’s title. Could you have Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic syndrome?

If you have absolutely no clue, that’s okay.  It’s even expected. For the term’s only recently been coined by the American Heart Association.

So What Is Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic Syndrome?

The AHA felt the need to create the term “due to connections” among heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, and obesity that engender “poor health outcomes.” These, unlike your probable unawareness of the syndrome that’s often abbreviated to CKM, aren’t okay.

Especially when a recent study published in JAMA determined there’s a 90-percent chance you have it.

Feeling a bit body slammed by that? Or like you just got punched in the solar plexus? While either feeling is one you’d rather not experience, if it’s results from stage one of the syndrome, you’re in luck. In fact, Ashish Verma, MD, assistant professor of nephrology at the Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine, would tell you to regard it as an “opportunity.”

When Disease Becomes ‘Opportunity’

Because, as she told Kristen Fischer in an article about CKM for Health, you do not yet have a really serious health problem. You do have, however, at least one of the precursors that lead to one, like too high a BMI, too big a belly, or prediabetes.

Do nothing about this and there’s a really good chance stage one moves to stage two, which is the current case the JAMA study estimates for nearly half of the nearly 90 percent of adult Americans who have CKM. Stage two manifests itself as one or more of the following: kidney disease, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. When the heart troubles in that list escalate, you’ve reached stage three. Stage four occurs when those heart troubles become heart disease.

Yet reaching stage three could be every bit as dangerous as stage four.

Stage Three: Not a Good Place to Be

Dying from heart disease has actually declined since 2000. Yet dying from “heart failure” — which in a medical sense simply means your heart’s not working as well as it should — has increased 3 percent in the same time.

While I’d rather not learn about an increase like that, here’s an equally strong “rather not.” That the medical world create another term that’s just as likely to confuse as clarify. But all bluster aside, this new term is really necessary because of what Laura Manaker, MS, RDN, LD —who’s also an award-winning registered dietitian, book author, speaker, and entrepreneur — explains in an article about CKM syndrome for Verywell Health.

Why the New Term Is Needed

That the new term “underscores the interconnectedness of cardiovascular diseases, kidney dysfunction, and metabolic disorders such as diabetes and obesity.” That recognizing this interconnectedness is essential since these maladies often “coexist” and “exacerbate each other.”

So it makes good sense for you to learn the term — and keep pedaling and eating well so your doc never mentions it to you.

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Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.

A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.