20% Of People Considered "Lean" Are Metabolically Unhealthy: Why It's Hard To Tell

When you think of "metabolic dysfunction," chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and so on may come to mind. But according to family medicine physician Julie Foucher-Urcuyo, M.D., M.S., you don't have to suffer from any of those conditions to have metabolic dysfunction. In fact, she tells me on this episode of the mindbodygreen podcast that 20% of people considered "lean" are still metabolically unhealthy1.

That's because, according to Foucher-Urcuyo, weight is only another symptom of metabolic dysfunction; it's not necessarily leading the charge: "If we only focus on the weight, we miss the forest through the trees," she adds. 

Slightly different from metabolic syndrome, "Metabolic dysfunction is any abnormal regulation of blood sugar, lipids, or a chronic state of inflammation that leads to disease later on," Foucher-Urcuyo says. That said, metabolic dysfunction doesn't just appear as chronic disease one day—it builds up over years silently. When those conditions start to become noticeable, oftentimes they've been wreaking havoc internally for quite some time. 

"People often realize they need to make changes, but by the third phase, the process could be going for 10, 20 years," Foucher-Urcuyo explains. That's why the key to combating metabolic dysfunction is not to wait until the third and final phase—it's to address the issues while they're silently accumulating in your body. "You have to take a look under the hood," she adds. "Really see what's going on inside."