The clich sentiment "you can't judge a book by its cover" certainly rings true when it comes to metabolic health.

While historically, many experts saw weight and obesity as the main issue, it's now clear that's far from the truth. "Obesity is just another marker of metabolic health; it's not the cause," says neuroendocrinologist Robert Lustig, M.D., and author of the upcoming book Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine. "It's downstream of the metabolic problem; it's not the metabolic problem itself."

In fact, 20% of people considered "lean" are still metabolically unhealthy.

The reality is, despite any external appearances, most people aren't optimally functioning internally. According to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, only one in eight Americans are metabolically healthy.

That's a pretty big issue considering metabolic dysfunction increases your risk of complications down the road, like heart disease, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, and more, Julie Foucher-Urcuyo, M.D., M.S., says in a recent mindbodygreen podcast episode. What's more,in our current pandemic, "People who are metabolically unhealthy seem to be more at risk of getting severely ill when they do get infected with the virus," she says.

At mbg, we're highly focused on metabolic health, now more than ever. One question that's been top of mind: How can you gauge your own metabolic health status? While there's no standard definitionof metabolic health in the medical community, we've sourced some top experts in the field to compile some primary markers to consider:

The rest is here:
Are You Metabolically Healthy? Functional MDs Share 6 Ways To Find Out - mindbodygreen.com