Judy Foreman Author & Journalist

More than 30 years ago, when Dr. David Heber was an intern at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, he asked the senior doctors the same question over and over.

“How come all my patients have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes? Are these things linked?” His mentors would shrug and say, “Dave, common things occur commonly. Go back to work,” he said.

Today, doctors know Heber’s intuition was right. Type 2 diabetes and heart disease are physiologically linked. What’s more, according to new government figures, a whopping 64 million Americans now have what’s called Metabolic Syndrome [cq caps], also known as  insulin resistance, which doubles the risk of heart disease and raises diabetes risk by 30 percent.

“It’s a chain from obesity to diabetes to heart disease,” said Heber, now director of UCLA’s Center for Human Nutrition. “In the next 10 years, 80 percent of all heart disease will be due to Type 2 diabetes.”

Granted, you may never have heard of Metabolic Syndrome. But you probably have it if you have any three of the following five factors: