Will A Keto Diet Lower Triglycerides And Cholesterol
No, keto diets have been shown to increase cholesterol levels. The Mediterranean diet, however, has been shown to lower cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of cardiac events.
The Mediterranean diet promotes eating vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and healthy fats daily eating fish, poultry, beans, and eggs weekly reducing portions of dairy and limiting red meat.
Consult A Doctor For Your Triglycerides Problem
High Triglycerides and low Cholesterol can be caused by a lot of reasons. If you take Triglycerides and Cholesterol blood tests and the results are higher than 150 mg/dL for Triglycerides and lower than 0 mg/dL for Cholesterol, your physician may recommend more tests to figure out the problem. You might also get these tests if your physician thinks you have some other disease.
What Are Risk Factors For High Triglycerides
Factors that may raise triglyceride levels include:
- Excessive alcohol use.
- American Academy of Family Physicians. High Cholesterol. Accessed 11/182/2021.
- American Heart Association. Cholesterol. Accessed 11/18/2021.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Getting Your Cholesterol Checked. Accessed 11/18/2021.
- Hormone Health Network. Triglycerides. Accessed 11/18/2021.
- MedlinePlus. Triglycerides Test. Accessed 11/18/2021.
- Merck Manual Consumer Version. Overview of Cholesterol and Lipid Fats. Accessed 11/18/2021.
- National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. High Blood Triglycerides. Accessed 11/18/2021.
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Treatments For High Triglyceride Levels
If you have high triglycerides, your doctor’s treatment should include healthy eating and exercise. Avoiding processed and sugary foods is paramount these dietary changes alone can have a tremendous impact on your triglyceride levels. Your doctor may also recommend taking omega 3 fatty acid supplements.
Begin today. Talk to your doctor or other health care provider about exactly what you need to do to start living a healthy lifestyle to lower triglycerides, help prevent a heart attack or stroke, avoid or manage diabetes, and reduce your chances of developing liver disease and pancreatitis.
Diagnosis Of High Triglycerides
A blood test can reveal whether or not you have high triglycerides. You may need to have two blood tests for accurate results. Dont eat anything for at least 12 hours before each blood test because food particularly fatty food can temporarily boost triglyceride levels in the blood and skew your test results.Triglycerides are measured in mmol/L. The range includes:
- Very high over 6 mmol/L
- High between2 and 6 mmol/L
- Borderline high between 1.7 and 2 mmol/L
- Normal below 1.7 mmol/L
The doctor may also test your cholesterol levels. In many cases, high triglycerides and high cholesterol go hand in hand. This condition is sometimes known as combined hyperlipidemia.
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How To Lower Cholesterol And Triglycerides
Triglycerides are a type of lipid, or fat, your body produces to store extra calories and provide energy. Cholesterol is another lipid that circulates in your blood. Your body uses cholesterol to build cells and produce hormones.
Both triglycerides and cholesterol are essential for your health but having levels that are too high puts your health at risk. Living a healthy lifestyle helps to keep your cholesterol and triglyceride levels within a normal range.
This article covers how triglycerides and cholesterol affect your health and how you can lower them naturally.
Luis Alvarez / Getty Images
Should You Worry About High Triglycerides
These blood fats can be one of the signs of metabolic syndrome, which increases the risk for having a heart attack or stroke.
Until recently, triglycerides tended to get less attention when looking at cardiovascular risk compared to LDL and HDL cholesterol levels. There’s no question that extremely high levels spell trouble and can lead to acute pancreatitis. But what about treating lower levels of triglycerides? Recent evidence suggests you should work to reduce triglyceride levels of they are higher than normal, especially if you have heart disease or have other risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure or smoking.
Triglyceride levels |
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*All values in milligrams per deciliter |
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How Often Should My Triglycerides Be Tested
If youâre a healthy adult, you should get a lipid profile every 4-6 years. Children should have it done at least once between the ages of 9 and 11, and one more time between 17 and 21. If youâre making changes to your diet or taking medication for high cholesterol or triglycerides, experts advise you to get a lipid profile afterward.
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Know Your Triglyceride Numbers
A blood test called a lipid panel checks both your triglyceride and cholesterol levels. Usually, your doctor will ask that you fast, or not eat or drink anything other than water, for 9-12 hours before the test. Youâll get blood taken from a vein in your arm. Some labs offer non-fasting lipid panels, or they may prick your finger for blood.
Here are the levels, based on a fastingblood test.
- Normal: Less than 150 mg/dL
- Borderline: 150 to 199 mg/dL
- High: 200 to 499 mg/dL
- Very High: 500 mg/dL or above
Anyone over age 20 needs to get regular tests to track their cholesterol and triglyceride levels, according to the American Heart Association.
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What Not To Eat The Foods To Avoid
How to behave on the opposite side, that is: what not to eat in case of high triglycerides? First, we need to reduce the intake of as much as possible simple sugars. It is also necessary to strongly limit or better still eliminate those foods which promote the increase of LDL cholesterol .
In case of particularly high levels of triglycerides it is recommended to further reduce, in any case by relying on your doctor, thecarbohydrate intake. You may need to limit your intake to whole grains or rice only, avoiding bread and pasta altogether.
Heres a summary of the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans:
Avoid industrial trans fats.
Replace saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats, and aim to get less than 10% of your calories from saturated fats.
Reduce calories from solid animal fats with plant oils when possible.
Prioritize seafood , lean meats, poultry, eggs, legumes , nuts, seeds, and soy products over red and processed meats as sources of protein.
A Sign Of Metabolic Syndrome
People with metabolic syndrome are several times more likely to have a heart attack or stroke. The risk of eventually developing diabetes is even greater.
A syndrome is, by definition, a group of signs and symptoms that occur together because of an underlying condition. For metabolic syndrome, that group includes abdominal obesity , high blood pressure, high blood sugar, low HDL cholesterol and, yes, high triglyceride levels.
So as doctors have started to take metabolic syndrome more seriously, they’ve also started to pay more attention to triglyceride levels as one of its telltale signs.
Triglycerides go it aloneHDL and triglycerides are metabolically connected and are often inversely related: As triglycerides go up, HDL goes down and vice versa. But that isn’t always so. People can have “isolated” high triglycerides without low HDL levels, and research is now showing that high triglycerides are an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease, no matter what the HDL is. |
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Triglycerides And Blood Sugar
Having high triglycerides could be a sign that youâre becoming insulin-resistant, which means your body isnât using insulin properly.
When insulin doesnât do its job, glucose can’t get into your cells. That raises your blood sugar levels, which can lead to pre-diabetes and, eventually, type 2 diabetes.
Having diabetes makes you much more likely to have a heart attack and other heart problems, in addition to the risk from your high triglycerides.
Untreated diabetes is a major health threat. To manage it well, you may need to track everything you eat, test your blood sugar, exercise, lose extra weight, take medication as directed, and keep up with your medical appointments.
Many people don’t know that they have diabetes. Your doctor should check on whether you do, and if so, help you get both your diabetes and your triglycerides under control.
High Triglycerides And Low Hdl Cholesterol Can Be Caused By Many Reasons
If your Triglycerides is in between 0 mg/dL and 150 mg/dL and your HDL cholesterol is in between 40 mg/dL and 60 mg/dL then you need not worry as these are the normal ranges for Triglycerides and HDL cholesterol respectively. But if your levels are lesser or greater than the above values, then there may be some problem in your body.
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What Is A High Triglyceride Level
High triglycerides can be dangerous to your health. Unfortunately, high triglycerides, like high cholesterol, rarely causes symptoms. Its vital to get routine lipid blood tests to check cholesterol numbers.
Your healthcare provider determines total cholesterol by looking at a combination of triglycerides, HDL and LDL numbers. If your triglycerides and LDL cholesterol are high, but your HDL is low, you have an increased risk of heart attack and stroke.
For the most accurate reading, you should fast 8 to 12 hours before a lipid blood test. A healthy number for triglycerides is below 150 milligrams per deciliter .
Your healthcare provider classifies high triglyceride levels as:
- Mild: 150-199 mg/dL.
- Severe: Greater than 500 mg/dL.
How Is A Lipid Disorder Diagnosed
To check your cholesterol levels, your doctor will order a blood test called a lipid profile, or lipid panel. This test measures your total cholesterol and triglycerides. Before this test, your doctor will likely ask you to avoid eating and drinking liquids other than water for at least 8 to 12 hours.
The lipid profile measures cholesterol in milligrams of cholesterol per deciliter . Your total cholesterol level should be no higher than 200 mg/dL. Learn how to understand your cholesterol results.
A combination of medications and lifestyle changes is a common treatment plan to correct high cholesterol and triglycerides. Your doctor may also suggest certain supplements.
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Indian Diet To Reduce Cholesterol & Triglyceride : Tip 5 Milk And Milk Products Are Fine In Moderation
Unless you are lactose intolerant or have a milk allergy, avoiding milk just doesnt make any sense. Full fat milk contains saturated fat. However, we cant restrict milks nutritive value only to this. Its a great source of protein, vitamins, and minerals also. To balance it out, try consuming double-toned milk or skimmed milk and its product.
A glass of milk can easily be part of your daily diet. If you find difficulty digesting milk, try milk products like curd, buttermilk as mid-morning/ afternoon snacks or to finish lunch.
Pathologies Linked To High Triglycerides
When it comes to the consequences of high triglycerides, special attention should be paid. This condition can be followed by various cardiovascular diseases, even potentially fatal: the reference is in particular toheart attack and tostroke, which can be favored by the deterioration of the health of the arteries and other blood vessels.
The effects on blood pressure should also not be underestimated , to the development of the condition known as fat liver, to the manifestation of high levels of glycemia even on an empty stomach and also with the increase in the values of bad LDL cholesterol.
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My Cholesterol Is Normal But My Triglycerides Are High: Why Is That
So both your HDL and LDL levels are where they should be, but your triglycerides are still high why is that?
Triglycerides become elevated due to excess calories that do not get burned off, and in turned get stored in fat cells. Statins are medications that primarily lower LDL cholesterol, but depending on the medication dose, can lower Triglycerides from 20 to 40 percent, Sai Hanumanthu MD, with the TriHealth Heart Institute explains.
There are steps you can take to lower your triglyceride levels while promoting good cardiovascular health, including:
- Losing 5 to 10 pounds if overweight
- Avoiding alcohol
- Avoiding foods high in saturated fats
- Limiting simple carbs that have high processed sugars .
- Participating in 30 minutes of exercise per day
All these suggestions and routine follow up with a medical professional will lower you triglyceride level, even despite a low total cholesterol, Dr. Hanumanthu says.
How To Raise Your Good Hdl Cholesterol Levels
Health Check Certified By: Patty Weasler, RN
There are a lot of things to keep track of when it comes to your health, one of which is your cholesterol levels. This information tells us how well the blood is circulating in our bodies and poor results can be an indicator that something with your health is not quite right.
While nearly 40-percent of American adults have high cholesterol, did you know that cholesterol can also be too low? Thats because there are different types of cholesterol that doctors are looking at. Heres an explainer on cholesterol and how you can raise your good HDL levels.
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Normal Range Of Cholesterol : 0
Ideal values of Cholesterol depending on age :
| Age | |
|---|---|
| > 100 years | 53.579 |
If you want your blood test report to be interpreted by Cholesterol specialist, then you can upload your report. Our Cholesterol expert will provide you with the most accurate interpretation of your blood test results and treatment within 12 hours. Upload blood test report now
Why Do Triglycerides Matter
Having high triglyceride levels isnt good for your body. High triglycerides can lead to the hardening and narrowing of the arteries, a condition known as atherosclerosis. This condition can worsen, leading to coronary artery disease.
If triglyceride levels become extremely high, you may develop pancreatitis, a condition that causes the pancreas to become inflamed.
High triglycerides can also indicate other negative health conditions that can increase your risk of certain cardiovascular threats. These include:
- Metabolic Syndrome. This refers to a cluster of health conditions that can place you at a higher risk of cardiovascular events. They include high cholesterol, high blood pressure, insulin resistance , and excess weight.
- Type 2 Diabetes. Having high levels of triglycerides can indicate you may also be prediabetic or have developed insulin resistance. A blood test can measure your blood sugar levels.
- Hypothyroidism. In some cases, high blood triglycerides may indicate that your thyroid isnt producing enough hormones.
Because of the increased risks to your heart health, its important to ensure your triglyceride levels are in a healthy range. The good news is that its easy to keep your triglyceride levels low with a few simple dietary and lifestyle changes.
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Follow A Lower Carb Diet
Much like added sugar, extra calories from carbs in your diet are converted into triglycerides and stored in fat cells.
Not surprisingly, low carb diets have been linked to lower blood triglyceride levels .
A review of 12 randomized controlled trials found that people following reduced carb diets typically saw a reduction in triglyceride levels at 6, 12, and 24 months. Across these studies, triglyceride levels decreased the most 6 months after starting a reduced calorie diet .
A 2020 review compared low fat and low carb diets. Researchers found that 612 months after starting their relative diets, those on the low carb diet had greater decreases in triglyceride levels than those on a low fat diet .
Summary
Following a low carb diet can lead to a significant reduction in blood triglyceride levels, at least in the short term, when compared with a low fat diet.
Articles On High Triglycerides
When your triglyceride levels are too high, you may not have symptoms. It’s a “silent” problem with big implications, such as a four-fold increase in the likelihood of having a heart attack or stroke.
A simple blood test is all it takes to check your triglyceride levels. If they’re too high, you can get them back under control, often by changing your daily habits.
If you already know that your triglyceride levels are too high, the actions you take now might even save your life.
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Atherosclerosis And Cardiovascular Disease
Despite being called good cholesterol, research suggests that very high levels of HDL may increase your risk of mortality.
In a 2017 Danish study , researchers analyzed the rate of mortality in groups of 52,268 European men and 64,240 women over an average of 6.4 years.
The researchers found the lowest mortality rates at HDL levels of 73 mg/dL in men and 93 mg/dL in women. Mortality rates increased significantly with HDL levels above 97 mg/dL in men and 135 mg/dL in women.
How Do Triglycerides Get Into The Blood
When we eat foods containing triglycerides, such as meat, dairy products, cooking oils and fats, they are absorbed by our intestines and packaged into parcels of fats and protein called chylomicrons . These carry the triglycerides in the blood stream to our tissues to be used for energy straight away, or stored for later.
The body also makes its own supply of triglycerides in the liver. This form is carried in a different type of lipoprotein known as VLDL cholesterol.
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