What Is Metabolic Health?
The basics of understanding blood glucose, body fat, and metabolic health
Metabolic health is a state in which the way your body uses, stores, and converts energy stays in balance. Five measurements are the basic signals of metabolic health: waist circumference, fasting blood glucose, blood pressure, triglycerides, and HDL cholesterol. If three or more of them fall outside the reference values, it is considered metabolic syndrome.
What is metabolic health?
“Metabolism” refers to all the processes by which your body uses the energy it gets from food, stores it, and converts it into the substances it needs. When these processes run in balance, this is called metabolic health.
When metabolic balance is lost, blood glucose often rises, fat builds up around the abdomen, and blood pressure and blood lipids tend to worsen together. When these risk factors appear together in one person, it is called metabolic syndrome.
Five signals of metabolic health
Waist circumference
Men: under 90 cm · Women: under 85 cm (Korean criteria)
Fasting blood glucose
Under 5.6 mmol/L (100 mg/dL)
Blood pressure
Under 130/85 mmHg
Triglycerides
Under 1.7 mmol/L (150 mg/dL)
HDL cholesterol
Men: 1.0 mmol/L (40 mg/dL) or higher · Women: 1.3 mmol/L (50 mg/dL) or higher
* These values are the reference values for the diagnostic criteria of metabolic syndrome. If any item falls outside the reference value, we recommend reviewing your lifestyle habits and talking to your health care provider.
- KDCA National Health Information Portal, “Metabolic Syndrome”
- NCEP ATP III diagnostic criteria (Korean criteria applied for abdominal obesity)