In 1968, Professor V. Dilman described a condition characterized by obesity, coronary artery disease, glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, and hypertension. Dr. Gerald Reaven has popularized the syndrome more recently in the West, and has coined the term Syndrome X.

The central feature of Syndrome X is insulin resistance, the gradual reduction in tissue cells sensitivity to insulin. The body produces even more insulin to counteract the body’s resistance, which then increases the body’s resistance to insulin, necessitating even more insulin.

This process can go unnoticed for 40 years, until serious health issues arise even to the extent the pancreas can’t produce enough insulin. This is  non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, which is referred to as Type-II Diabetes. Such diabetics often produce excessive the normal amounts of insulin, sometimes up to 4 times the needed amount yet because of their resistance to insulin.  With this, they require more and more insulin to maintain in range glucose levels. Hyperglycemia happens when the pancreas fails to produce enough insulin and soon diabetes is evident in your life.

Some experts estimate that half of all American’s suffer from undiagnosed insulin resistance. It is often elusive and hard to identify, the symptoms often being mistaken for other conditions. Insulin resistance can cause obesity, poor ability to focus, fatigue, edema and cravings for sugar and sweets.

Syndrome X centers around insulin resistance itself, but also encompasses the resulting conditions and imbalances in the body, including cardiovascular disease, type-II diabetes, obesity, hypertension, hyperuricemia (high uric acid) and mental decline.

Aging is blamed as the primary universal cause of developing Syndrome X, but our modern “Western” lifestyle greatly accelerates our development of the condition. Less than 200 years ago, people ate an average of just 5-pounds of sugar per year. Today, people in the US eat over 15  times that amount per year. Our rampant increase in obesity and diabetes can be traced almost entirely to this single factor. Our tendency to overeat, eat too much processed foods, wide-spread mineral deficiencies, smoke, alcohol, and overall lack of physical exercise increased the problem.