MONDAY, March 23, 2009 (Health.com) — What the heck are triglycerides? If you don’t know, you have plenty of company. The fatty particles found in your blood are important for heart health, but don’t get nearly as much attention as, say, cholesterol.
Now a new study suggests that there’s a good chance that your triglycerides are in the unhealthy zone, whether you know what they are or not. About one-third of American adults have triglyceride levels that are borderline or too high, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report published Monday in Archives of Internal Medicine.
“I see it as a major problem that we’ve completely ignored this problem so far,” says Børge Nordestgaard, MD, DMSc, of the University of Copenhagen, in Denmark. Dr. Nordestgaard has conducted research linking high triglyceride levels to cardiovascular disease and early death, but was not involved in the CDC research. “Everyone in clinical practice seemed to be so focused on LDL, LDL, LDL [bad cholesterol], people tended to forget triglycerides.”
Being too heavy, getting too little activity, drinking lots of alcohol, and eating lots of saturated fat can all add up to higher triglyceride levels because the body stores excess calories as triglycerides. Triglycerides are a third type of fatty particle found in the blood, along with LDL cholesterol and HDL (aka good) cholesterol. People taking certain medications or those who have diabetes or a genetic condition can have high triglycerides.
Next page: How dangerous are high triglycerides?
