Why It’s Good To Know About Triglycerides

What Are Triglycerides?

Many of us are regularly assess our cholesterol levels.  In fact, you might have been told that you have high cholesterol.  If so, you’ll probably know what to do to reduce your cholesterol level.  However, you might not appreciate why it’s good to know about triglycerides. Actually, if you’ve had a fasting blood test, the doctor is also checking your triglyceride levels.

Triglycerides are a type of fat, or lipid, found in your blood. When you eat, your body converts any calories it doesn’t need to use right away into triglycerides.  Subsequently, these triglycerides are stored in your fat cells. Throughout the day and night, hormones release triglycerides for energy between meals. Hence, if you regularly eat more calories than you burn (you might if you have a sedentary job and don’t exercise), please keep reading.  Moreover, if you eat particularly “easy” calories like carbohydrates (sugars) and fats, you may have high levels triglycerides.

Can We Avoid Triglycerides?

No, and you need some triglycerides to keep your body healthy.  Here are Wright’s guidelines to triglyceride levels in the blood:

• Normal: Less than 150 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), or less than 1.7 millimoles per litre (mmol/L)
• Borderline high: 150 to 199 mg/dL (1.8 to 2.2 mmol/L)
• High: 200 to 499 mg/dL (2.3 to 5.6 mmol/L)
• Very high: 500 mg/dL or above (5.7 mmol/L or above)

What you can aim to do is to keep your triglyceride levels healthy by cutting out by managing your diet.

9 Ways To Reduce Triglyceride Levels

Here is a list of things it’s good to know about triglycerides so that you can achieve a healthier lifestyle.

1. Cut out sugary foods such as fizzy drinks, sweets, pastries, and concentrated fruit juices.  Replace refined carbs such as white bread and pasta with wholegrain alternatives and try eating *red or brown rice instead of white rice.  Also see if you enjoy quinoa, barley, oats, or millet.
2. Regular exercise burns off excess triglycerides.  Maintaining a healthy weight lowers your chance of having high triglycerides.
3. Replace red meats with vegetable proteins, fish or skinless poultry.
4. Eat more fibre (fruits, vegetables, seeds, rice bran, oat bran, beans etc) and drink more water.
5. Avoid trans-fatty acids (hydrogenated vegetable oil) and processed meat products (hotdogs, luncheon meat).
6. Avoid too much fried food, and if you indulge make coconut oil your friend!
7. Enjoy Omega 3 fatty acids such as tuna, salmon, mackerel and sardines a couple of times per week and if you can add these vegetarian options into your daily food plan: flaxseed oil, coconut oil, vegetables & legumes, walnuts, and dark leafy green vegetables such as spinach and kale.
8. Lower your alcohol consumption.
9. Some herbs and spices are thought to help.  Try using turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, garlic, coriander seeds and apple cider vinegar.

• A quick footnote about rice.  If your household consumes a high volume of rice, consider this.  White rice is highly processed and is comprised mainly of STARCH.  Most of the vitamins and minerals are destroyed during processing.  Both brown rice and red rice are great sources of fibre, B vitamins, zinc, calcium and iron, manganese, selenium, magnesium and other nutrients. RED RICE is enriched with antioxidants that can help fight damaging free radicals in our body.  In Sri Lanka, red rice is often cheaper than white rice – happy days!

It’s Good To Know About Triglycerides – You Can Find Out More Here

Check out this informative article to find out more:  http://www.livescience.com/54151-triglycerides.html.

The main reason it’s good to know about triglycerides is that one size does not fit all.  In fact, what’s right for someone else is not necessarily right for you.  Actually, the best approach is to test different healthy alternatives on your body and you’ll know which ones work for you and which ones don’t.

A Gloopy Wonder!

For those of you who’ve seen me in Sri Lanka, you’ll know I’ve developed a coconut obsession.  I frequently enjoy smoothies made with coconut milk or freshly ground coconut and coconut water.  I cannot stress how much coconuts have improved my energy levels and general well-being.  One of my favourite things to sip on is to drink coconut and turmeric smoothies with fresh lime juice.  It looks a bit dodgy, but it tastes good and if you have a sweet tooth you can always add some honey.

One of my more recent discoveries is a lovely warming night time drink – Turmeric Milk or Golden Milk as it’s also called.  You can find the recipe here: https://healthandlovepage.com/turmeric-golden-milk-recipe/  – I use coconut milk with no honey.  With this recipe, you can keep the paste in your fridge and add it to whichever milk you choose to use for a quick and healthy slurp.  The combined benefits of turmeric, pepper and cinnamon are not to be sniffed at, so give it a go and test the honey version first if you like a sweeter taste.