What is a “normal” triglyceride level?
A blood test can measure the level of triglycerides in your blood. The levels vary with age. They also depend on when you last ate before the test. The measurement is most accurate if you have not eaten in the last 12 hours or so. Generally, you want your triglyceride level to be 150 mg/dL or less. A level between 150 and 199 mg/dL is borderline high. A level of 200 mg/dL is high. Triglycerides rarely reach extremely high levels unless you have an inherited tendency for high levels.
Contrary to popular advice, it truly requires a level of 60 mg/dl or less to eliminate or at least minimize all these undesirable blood particles. That’s the level of triglycerides that minimize the presence of triglyceride-containing undesirable lipoproteins causing plaque, like small LDL, small HDL, and VLDL. (The enzyme, cholesteryl-ester transfer protein, or CETP, is responsible for exchanging one triglyceride molecule for one cholesterol molecule between HDL and other lipoprotein particles. Thus, an excess of triglyceride availability permits CETP to operate unrestrained, creating more undesirable lipoproteins. (This was the basis for Pfizer’s now defunct CETP inhibitor, torcetrapib.) Of course, this triglyceride target is far below that of the conventional guidelines. The Adult Treatment Panel-III of the National Cholesterol Education Panel suggests that a triglyceride level of 150 mg/dl is okay. But the truth is that a level of 150 mg/dl is highly abnormal, permitting the persis
