Triglycerides

If your doctor were to tell you that your Triglycerides are high, would you know what that means? Would you know what to do?

Five to ten percent of adult Americans have mildly elevated levels of Triglycerides in their blood - amounts ranging between 150 and 400 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl). A mildly elevated triglyceride level doesn't necessarily increase your level of coronary heart disease.

What are Triglycerides? What's the relationship to heart disease? What can raise your Triglycerides? What you can do? Back to Food for Thought

However, a persistently high concentration of Triglycerides in your blood can accompany other coronary risk factors - high blood cholesterol, low levels of high- density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, hypertension, obesity and diabetes mellitus.

When a high Triglycerides level is one of several risk factors, changing your lifestyle is the first step to lowering your triglyceride level and reducing the risk of heart disease.

What are Triglycerides?
Triglycerides are a type of fat. Of the 60 to 100 grams of fat the average American eats every day, only a fraction is cholesterol. The majority are Triglycerides. Saturated, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats are all types of Triglycerides.

After you eat, your body digests Triglycerides contained in foods to use for energy or store as body fat. If many of the Triglycerides you ate were saturated, the liver breaks them down and makes them into cholesterol. Alcohol that you drink boosts the liver's production of Triglycerides and reduces the amount of fat that's cleared from your blood. In addition, the liver changes any source of excess calories - carbohydrate, fat or protein - into Triglycerides.

What's the relationship to heart disease?
Normal Triglyceride levels vary across a wide range, depending on your age and sex. A triglyceride level below 150 mg/dl can be considered normal, as long as blood cholesterol levels are also normal.

However, borderline evaluations of Triglycerides in the range of of 150 to 400 mg/dl often accompany other unhealthy amounts of fat in the blood, such as low levels of HDL cholesterol.

To determine your risk of heart disease, your doctor checks your lipid profile by comparing levels of Triglycerides, HDL cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in your blood. Your doctor also weighs other factors such as your family history and whether you have high blood pressure, smoke cigarettes or are overweight.

Triglyceride levels greater than 400 mg/dl present a risk not only of coronary heart disease, but of pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas).

What can raise your Triglycerides?
Here are several factors that can raise the level of Triglycerides in your blood:

• Weight - As weight increases, Triglyceride levels rise in both men and women, regardless of age. Obesity is the most common cause of mildly elevated Triglycerides.
• Diet - Excess calories, mainly from sugar and alcohol, can raise your Triglyceride level.
• Age - Your Triglyceride level steadily increases as you grow older. Women have lower levels than men.
• Medications - A variety of prescription medications, including oral contraceptives and thiazide diuretics, can raise Triglyceride levels. Ask your doctor about specific medication.
• Illness - Medical conditions linked with elevated Triglycerides include diabetes mellitus, hypothyroidism, kidney disease and liver disease.
• Heredity - Some forms of Triglycerides are congenital.

What you can do?

If you have mildly elevated Triglycerides accompanied by other coronary risk factors, these lifestyle changes can lower your triglyceride level and reduce your overall risk of heart disease. Here's the 5-step approach:

1. Lose Weight - Weight loss alone often lowers triglyceride levels.
2. Exercise - Regular exercise usually also raises HDL cholesterol and makes weight loss easier.
3. Eat less sugar and sugar-containing foods - Limiting amounts of fruit and fruit juice may also help lower levels.
4. Drink less alcohol - Some people are particularly sensitive to alcohol's ability to increase the liver's production of Triglycerides.
5. Limit total fat to less than 30% of calories - If the first four recommendations don't satisfactorily bring down levels, the next step is to limit fat and cholesterol.

Go easy on sugar and alcohol to lower Triglycerides: Eating fewer sweets and drinking less alcohol are the main ways you can lower a high level of Triglycerides in your blood.

Use less:

• Sugar-sweetened soft drinks, lemonade and fruit drinks
• Cake, pie, doughnuts, pastries, ice cream, ice milk, sherbert, sorbet, sugar-sweetened gelatin
• Cereals with more than 5 grams of sucrose and other sugars per ounce
• Candy, chocolate, sugar, honey, jam or jelly
• Beer, including the light beers
• Wine and wine coolers
• Liquor, liqueurs and cordials

Use now and then:

• Frozen yogurt, plain doughnuts and plain cookies and cakes, such as vanilla wafers and angel food cake
• Low alcohol beer
• Wine spritzers (wine and club soda)
• Mixed drinks with 1/2 jigger of liquor

Use instead:

• Fresh or unsweetened fruit (reasonable amounts)
• Sugar free hot chocolate
• Sugar free gelatin or pudding
• Complex carbohydrates such as bread sticks, popcorn, pretzels and crackers or muffins for snacks
• Sparkling mineral water, or club soda
• Nonalcoholic sparkling fruit juice
• Unsweetened fruit juice (reasonable amount)
• Fruit juice spritzers (unsweetened fruit juice and sparkling water or club soda)
• Sugar free soft drinks