What are triglycerides?
Triglycerides are a type of fat found in your blood. They are a major source of energy and the most common type of fat in your body. When you eat, your body uses the calories it needs for quick energy. Any extra calories are turned into triglycerides and stored in fat cells to be used later. The excess calories are stored as fat regardless of what kind of food you eat-fat, carbohydrate, or protein. If you regularly eat more calories than you burn, you may have high triglycerides. In normal amounts, triglycerides are important to good health. When triglyceride levels are high, it is not clear whether these high levels directly increase your risk for heart disease. But high triglycerides are often part of a group of conditions called metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is the combination of high blood pressure, high blood sugar, too much fat around the waist, low HDL (“good”) cholesterol, and high triglycerides. This syndrome does increase your risk for heart disease as well as for di
” to “My triglycerides are 400, do I need to worry?” on to “Help, my triglycerides are 1200, how do I fix this?” So, I’m going to answer all these questions here for those of you who are wondering, but haven’t asked. What are triglycerides? Triglycerides are a type of fat. Actually, they’re the most common type of fat in foods and in your body. When you eat foods containing fat and oil, such as butter, French fries, and chocolate chip cookies, the body takes the fat and stores it in your body as triglycerides. So, all those “fat cells” in your body are made up of triglycerides. What do triglycerides have to do with cholesterol? When you see your MD, he or she may order a “lipid panel” (lipid is a fancy term for fat). From the lipid panel you will learn your total cholesterol, HDL (good) cholesterol, LDL (bad) cholesterol, and triglycerides. Total cholesterol = HDL + LDL + VLDL Well, what in the world is VLDL? Not something you’ve probably seen or heard of before. VLDL is an acronym for
Triglycerides are a type of fat found in your blood. They are a major source of energy and the most common type of fat in your body. When you eat, your body uses the calories it needs for quick energy. Any extra calories are turned into triglycerides and stored in fat cells to be used later. The excess calories are stored as fat regardless of what kind of food you eat—fat, carbohydrate, or protein. If you regularly eat more calories than you burn, you may have high triglycerides. In normal amounts, triglycerides are important to good health. When triglyceride levels are high, it is not clear whether these high levels directly increase your risk for heart disease. But high triglycerides are often part of a group of conditions called metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is the combination of high blood pressure, high blood sugar, too much fat around the waist, low HDL (“good”) cholesterol, and high triglycerides. This syndrome does increase your risk for heart disease as well as for di
Triglycerides are the chemical form in which most fat exists in food as well as in the body. They’re also present in blood plasma and, in association with cholesterol, form the plasma lipids. Triglycerides in plasma are derived from fats eaten in foods or made in the body from other energy sources like carbohydrates. Calories ingested in a meal and not used immediately by tissues are converted to triglycerides and transported to fat cells to be stored. Hormones regulate the release of triglycerides from fat tissue so they meet the body’s needs for energy between meals. How is an excess of triglycerides harmful? Excess triglycerides in plasma is called hypertriglyceridemia. It’s linked to the occurrence of coronary artery disease in some people. Elevated triglycerides may be a consequence of other disease, such as untreated diabetes mellitus. Like cholesterol, increases in triglyceride levels can be detected by plasma measurements. These measurements should be made after an overnight fo
