Beyond Trim: Tame your triglycerides

A friend recently told me that her doctor had warned her about her high triglycerides. As a health coach my first thought was: “you have been eating and drinking too much”.

You can lose more friends that way so as a friend I simply asked her what the doctor recommended to lower them.

What exactly does it mean if the triglyceride level in your blood is elevated? Triglycerides are a type of fat. If you eat (or drink) more calories than your body needs, the excess calories are converted into fat to be stored for later energy needs. This fat is stored in cells that are specifically designed for the purpose.

It does not matter where the extra calories come from. This has been proven most recently by Dr. Kevin Hall at the National Institutes of Health. He completed a metabolic ward study to determine if macronutrient composition made a difference in the amount of fat created and stored. In a metabolic ward study, the participants are locked away under very strict conditions, so researchers were able to control how much and what kind of food they ate and to monitor their physical activity.

Dr. Hall and his colleagues varied the amount of carbohydrate, protein, and fat in the diet and found that it did not make a difference in body composition. It’s excess calories that are to blame.

The cells in your body that are designed to store fat have a limited capacity and every person has a unique number of fat cells. This explains how even people who look as if they are a healthy weight can still experience high triglycerides – they simply have fewer fat cells to use for storage.

If the triglyceride level in your blood is elevated and remains so over time it is an indication that your fat cells are filled and can’t hold more. This can lead to complications as your body looks for places to store this extra fat. It may then be stored in your liver, in muscle cells, and around your heart and other organs. These fat stores are a pre-cursor to diseases like cirrhosis (fatty liver), diabetes, and heart disease.

The good news is that you can lower your triglycerides by focusing on your diet. I highly recommend some form of calorie tracking app like MyFitnessPal, LoseIt, or Cronometer. These apps will help you determine the appropriate calories needed to ensure that your body is not creating additional triglycerides. By consistently eating and drinking fewer calories than you need every day, your body will stop producing fat and will eventually begin to use stored fat for energy.

Sherry DeWalt is the healthy lifestyles coordinator for the CGH Health Foundation in Sterling.