Read the full transcript of seasoned chiropractor Andy Barlow’s talk titled “Breaking the Code of Syndrome X”, at TEDxNewAlbany, June 3, 2025.
Listen to the audio version here:
Mary’s Story: Lost in the Medical System
Andy Barlow: Thank you. Today I want to share a story with you. It’s a story that some of you may be able to relate to, even identify with. It’s the story of a beloved wife and mother of two who for years had been suffering with brain fog, depression, anxiety, and migraine headaches.
Her name is Mary, and as Mary was detailing her history to me, she made a profound statement. She said, “Dr. Barlow, I just feel like I’m being thrown into this vortex of the medical industrialized complex.” And she goes on to say, “I know this sounds silly, but I just feel like I’m in this medical merry-go-round and I’m being chewed up and spit out.”
And what’s happening, instead of getting resolution, I’m being referred to doctor after doctor after doctor, again, with no resolution, just more excuses like, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just looking for attention. You’re what we call a professional patient.”
So imagine for just a second the anger, the frustration, the confusion that swirls in a person’s mind when on one hand they’re told by a healthcare professional that nothing is wrong with them, and on the other hand they know for years they’ve been suffering with chronic health issues.
But Mary wasn’t going to give up. She was dedicated and she was determined to regaining her health and her life, not just for her sake, but for the sake of her children and her husband.
The Diagnosis That Changed Everything
And after the end of our examination, I told Mary, I said, “It’s quite clear, Mary, what’s going on here. You’re suffering from a metabolic condition and that name is Syndrome X. And this metabolic condition, Syndrome X, may be the root cause to all or nearly all of your health problems.”
And the sigh of relief on this woman’s face was palpable. And she said, “Finally, someone who listened, someone who understood and could explain in plain English what was wrong.” So we put Mary on a specific metabolic program tailored for her needs and over time changed the trajectory of her life.
The Silent Epidemic: Understanding Metabolic Syndrome
In the 1990s, Syndrome X got kind of a facelift, if you will. It got renamed and rebranded to metabolic syndrome. And today, in America, 34% of adults suffer from metabolic syndrome. And worldwide, 40 to 46% of adults suffer from metabolic syndrome.
And here is a clinical study with some staggering results. And the participants in this study, regardless of their symptom, was tested for metabolic syndrome. And it was discovered in this clinical study that 37% of all participants had metabolic syndrome, but not one person knew they had a metabolic disorder.
So metabolic syndrome is not just a diagnosis. It’s a practical strategy to transform the way we live, eat and move. And today, using cutting-edge scientific research and practical strategies, I will share with you how we can turn this silent epidemic into a personal and global health revolution.
Now, this part is important. The aim of today’s talk, and my personal goal, is to inspire millions to rewrite their health destiny.
The Five Risk Factors of Syndrome X
So what is Syndrome X and metabolic syndrome? Well, if we look at Syndrome X, it is a cluster of five interconnecting risk factors. And to be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, or the definition of metabolic syndrome, is three of these five metabolic risk factors.
So what are the five risk factors? Number one is obesity. Number two is hypertension. Number three is blood sugar dysregulation. Number four is high triglycerides. And number five is low, high-density lipoproteins.
Now, I know, I get it, that’s a lot of information. But don’t worry, we’re going to break this down into individual slides so we can get a better understanding.
Risk Factor #1: Obesity
Now the first risk factor is obesity. In America, 74% of adults are overweight, and an incredible 43% of Americans are obese. So if we look just at this first risk factor as a standalone, almost 50% of Americans suffer from just this first risk factor.
Risk Factor #2: Hypertension
The second risk factor is hypertension. So how do we define hypertension? Once you get your blood pressure checked, if your blood pressure is higher than 130 over 85 millimeters of mercury, you suffer from hypertension. So we look at the studies here, and we go, wow, 48% of Americans suffer from just this one metabolic marker.
And then the third marker that we see here, the third one out of five, we have blood sugar dysregulation. So when you get your blood lab panel, you can see on there it says glucose. And I’m going to be throwing a few numbers out, so please bear with me.
So the optimal functioning range for your fasting glucose is 70 to 99. 70 to 99, that’s the optimal functioning goal. Now simply stated, if you have glucose that’s in the triple digits, you have a problem. And the higher the number, the worse your condition.
So 100 to 125, that danger zone there is called insulin-resistant or pre-diabetes. And if we are at 126, this catastrophic zone here is called type 2 diabetes, and we can see that 15% of Americans are in this catastrophic zone. So if we just look at this third category and we use it as just a standalone, we can see that better than 50% of Americans suffer from this third metabolic disorder.
Risk Factor #4: High Triglycerides
The third metabolic characteristic of metabolic syndrome is high triglycerides. So on your lab panel, if you look at it, cholesterol, right below cholesterol, you will see triglycerides. The magic number here is 150. So if your triglycerides are higher than 150, you have a problem with the forced metabolic risk factor.
And you can see that 25 to 30% of Americans suffer from high triglycerides.
So how does our triglycerides, how does it get elevated? As previously stated, excessive caloric intake, another way of saying that is we eat too much. So your body, when you eat more than you should, your body takes that excess calories and converts it into fats and lipids and triglycerides.
Risk Factor #5: Low HDL Cholesterol
The fifth risk factor is what is called HDL, high-density lipoprotein. Some of you may have heard of this as being your good cholesterol, and here’s why. HDL, what it does is it takes excessive cholesterol that’s in your blood and it’s a transporter. It transports the cholesterol to your liver, and your liver breaks it down and gets rid of it, or eliminates it, if you will.
So our high-density lipoprotein, you can see this on your lab score, for women it should be 50 or higher, and for men it should be 40 or higher. So we can see the percentages of women and men that have this fifth category.
The Shocking Reality: America’s Metabolic Health Crisis
Here is another amazing study, and that is 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. You can say this another way, it means only 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy. The five risk factors, they have one or two of these risk factors, but not enough to actually be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. The part of this talk today is to change these crazy statistics.
If you’re suffering from metabolic syndrome, three of the five risk factors, you increase your chances of cardiovascular disease two times, and you increase your risk of type 2 diabetes five-fold.
The Connection to America’s Leading Causes of Death
Here are the top 10 leading causes of death in America. So why would I have the top 10 leading causes of death in America on a metabolic syndrome workshop? Well, because metabolic syndrome is linked to and associated with six of the top 10 causes of death in America.
Number one is cardiovascular disease. Number two is cancer. Metabolic syndrome is associated and linked to several different types of cancer, but the top two would be breast cancer and colorectal cancer. The fifth killer in the United States is stroke, and yes, metabolic syndrome is linked to and associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
And here, once again, is that dreaded diabetic condition that we were talking about earlier. It’s the seventh leading cause of death in America. But it’s not just that you have diabetes, it’s the catastrophic health problems associated with diabetes, like you can go blind because of this. Your number one leading cause of leg amputation is diabetes. We can have numbness and tingling in our hands and feet. It will cause our hands and feet to go cold and turning blue and purple.
And type 2 diabetes is linked to and associated with, actually, our ninth leading cause of death, which is kidney disease.
Beyond Death: The Hidden Chronic Conditions
But it’s more to it than that. Those are the end-stage pathological disorders in which human beings succumb to, but what about metabolic disorders that cause other chronic conditions for years, even decades, unbeknownst to the person suffering with it, like, for example, non-alcoholic fatty liver? Thirty percent of Americans suffer with non-alcoholic fatty liver, and our liver is in the right upper quadrant of our abdomen. It’s the largest internal organ in our body. It’s about the size of a football, so somebody can catch my football, liver, whatever. So it’s the size of a football, and it has 500 different functions. Don’t worry, we’re not covering all 500 today, but we are going to cover one very important one, and that is detoxification.
So imagine for just a second, you didn’t take out the garbage from your home for weeks, months, or even years, and imagine the putrid, let’s just say, stench that would be coming from your home.
Now, let’s look at the liver, because it detoxes your body, and we have a detoxification problem because of a fatty liver, and now we can’t take out the garbage, and all of this toxification that’s building up in our body, that can lead to multiple health issues, like cirrhosis of the liver, liver cancer, cardiovascular disease, and again, the dreaded type 2 diabetes.
Leaky Gut Syndrome: When Your Body’s Screen Door Breaks
Metabolic syndrome is also linked to leaky gut syndrome, also known as intestinal permeability. So if I were to ask somebody on this side of the room, and I would say, hey, what is the purpose of a screen door at your home? If you thought about it for a minute, you would say, well, it lets air in, and it keeps bugs out, and I would say, you’re absolutely correct.
So we have our gut, we have our bloodstream, and between the bloodstream, we have a protective barrier, and this barrier is designed to allow digested, key word here, digested foods to pass from the gut into the bloodstream for optimal function. But if I were to ask somebody on this side of the room, I would say, well, what if a local kid in the neighborhood accidentally threw a baseball through your screen? You would say, well, the bug’s on the outside, get on the inside.
So here we have our gut, we have our bloodstream, and in between this barrier that’s supposed to protect us now, it’s damaged, and we’re letting bugs, if you will, things like undigested proteins from gluten, which is wheat, barley, and rye, and casein, which is a protein that’s in milk, and a nasty bug you may have never heard of before, but nevertheless, it is in here, it’s called lipopolysaccharide, and it can translocate from the gut into the bloodstream, causing chronic inflammation, and it’s the gateway to autoimmune disorders.
The Symptoms: Pain, Fatigue, and Mental Health
Metabolic syndrome is also linked to chronic pain, I know that’s a general term, but one word comes to mind, fibromyalgia. Metabolic syndrome is also linked to chronic fatigue. There’s two types of chronic fatigue, cognitive and physical. So cognitive fatigue would be things like brain fog, focus, attention, concentration, memory relapses, and then physical fatigue would be like at 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon, we just feel like we’re kind of running out of gas, our tank is on empty, so that would be chronic fatigue. And metabolic syndrome is also linked to and associated with depression and anxiety.
How Did We Get This Way?
So how did we get this way? Why are we so sick in America? Well, I thought you would never ask. I can sum this up in five words, and that is unhealthy diet, unhealthy lifestyle choices. So how do you reverse engineer that? Healthy diet, healthy lifestyle choices. So here we’re going to share two recipes. This one, this first one is a recipe for destruction, and we’re going to follow this up by a recipe for optimization.
Now my wife is in the audience, and my grandson is here, Caleb, my wife’s name is Faye, so Caleb can back me up on this, make sure that I’m telling the truth here. So when Faye cooks a meal, and she follows a recipe, so when we follow a recipe, there’s a thing called cause and effect, cause and effect. So when Faye follows the recipe, the end result is a delicious meal, correct? And so here, we have a recipe for destruction, so here, cause and effect. If we want to get into this fast lane of metabolic syndrome, if we want to move into the fast track of chronic disease and health disorders, here’s your recipe.
So another way of saying this is just stay as far away from this as you can, but here we go. Fast food, fried food, processed food, and sugary drinks. If you want to get the perfect formula for metabolic syndrome and chronic diseases, there it is. And then we add artificial sweeteners to this, and this can lead to neurotoxins, which can also lead to brain fog, focused attention, depression, and anxiety, and gluten.
I carry two gluten genes, and I always tell my patients, don’t guess, test, because if I have this gluten gene, and I eat gluten, I can activate this gene, leading to chronic inflammation, as well as autoimmune disorders. Also, a lot of adults and children suffer from casein, which is a protein that’s in milk, and again, I’ll say, don’t guess, test, because if you have this sensitivity, that can lead to bloating, distention, constipation, diarrhea, and malabsorption issues in our gut.
Dirty dozen, you need to Google this, and that is, these are 12 foods you may think are healthy for you, but because of their high pesticide content, could be devastating to your health and sedentary lifestyle, meaning we sit on our butts, sit on the couch, watch TV, and we’re on social media.
Recipe for Optimization
So we need to get rid of the recipe for destruction, and we need to lean into recipe for optimization. Clean 15, we need to Google that, clean 15, these are 15 powerful foods that help your body heal. There are three diets here, I recommend you try all of them. MIND diet, anything we do for our brain, we increase brain, body, and gut health. Mediterranean diet, as well as DASH diet.
I recommend all of my patients consume five to seven salads per week. Simply stated, for dinner every night, just make a commitment to eat a salad, and we’re going to add olive oil and balsamic vinegar to it. It’s very tasty and a powerful dish. We’re going to increase healthy fats, like omega-3 fish oil, olive oil, avocado as well as avocado oil, and instead of grabbing these sugary snacks, these sugar bars, why don’t we grab some healthy nuts like almonds, pecans, pistachios, and walnuts.
We need to exercise 30 minutes a day. We need to move our body to get blood flow and oxygen, not only to our body, but to get blood flow and oxygen to our brain. We need to sleep six to eight hours a night, and we need to be hydrated because for optimal brain function, skin health, joint health, as well as detoxification.
Conclusion: Taking Control of Your Health
I’m going to conclude today by saying that if we control what we put in our mind, and we control what we put in our mouth, and we exercise, these three things can improve the quality of your life. Let’s make a personal commitment to take personal responsibility for our health and our lifestyle choices because as Mary discovered, not only is metabolic syndrome, as Mary discovered that metabolic syndrome, we need to change the way we eat, sleep, and move, but also Mary discovered that by decoding these metabolic signals, we can reclaim not only our health, but our life.
Last slide. UCLA study showed that metabolic syndrome is not only preventable, but thank goodness it is reversible. I’m Dr. Andy Barlow, and thank you for your time. Thank you.
