Prevention Of High Triglycerides In The Blood
In which foods are they found? Why are they unhealthy? What can you do about it? How can you prevent?
Everyone is talking about cholesterol, but there are other dangerous fats that can circulate in your blood at high levels. Learn more about triglycerides!
What foods are they in? Why are they unhealthy? What can you do about it? How can you prevent?
Which fats are unhealthy?
First of all: fat is not just fat! And basically to forego any dietary fat would also be unhealthy!
Dietary fats are suppliers of essential fatty acids, they are vitamin carriers and also vitamin suppliers and ultimately, as flavor carriers, they also ensure that a dish tastes “round”.
Basically, you have to differentiate between saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids (fats that are solid at room temperature) are not essential to life, and to a greater extent even harmful to health, as they are responsible, among other things, for driving the cholesterol level in the blood to unhealthy levels.
It gets more complicated with unsaturated fatty acids. There are monounsaturated, diunsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids. What they all have in common is that they are liquid at room temperature.
The body is able to produce monounsaturated fatty acids (eg from olive oil) itself; therefore they are not essential.
The diunsaturated fatty acids include linoleic acid, for example, which is contained in safflower or sunflower oil.
Polyunsaturated fatty acids can be found in fish, corn oil, but also in safflower oil or nuts. The body cannot produce polyunsaturated fatty acids itself, so they are essential.
So essential means “vital”. You have to get these fats with your food!
What are triglycerides?
Triglycerides are not as rare as you might think: about 90% of all our dietary fats consist of triglycerides ! They are the fat that is also stored in our body as “energy reserve” – the annoying love handles, lifebuoys and belly fat.
Triglycerides can also be produced by the body itself, namely from sugar or alcohol. Another reason to avoid sugar and alcohol …
A normal level of triglycerides is therefore healthy, diseases such as lipid metabolism disorders, but mostly being overweight due to poor nutrition, can cause the triglyceride levels in the blood to rise to dangerous levels.
So if your diet contains a lot of fat, a lot of sugar and alcohol and you are also overweight, you should have your triglyceride levels determined by a doctor!
Risk triglycerides
Excessive triglycerides can have a big impact on your health. This is how high triglyceride levels cause:
- Pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas)
- Angina pectoris
- Bad blood flow to the brain
- Atherosclerosis (vascular calcification)
So it makes more than sense with regard to your health to keep an eye on the blood level of your triglycerides and to take urgent action against increased levels!
Prevention of high triglyerides?
Of course, it is very easy to ask the doctor for pills when it is already too late. But it makes a lot more sense to lean forward ! We’ll explain how!
Weight reduction
The most effective way of doing this is by changing your lifestyle. Because it is very important to empty your personal “triglyceride stores” on your hips, buttocks and stomach.
As long as you are overweight, your “overflowing triglyceride stores” will always ensure that your blood values are not in the healthy range.
Avoid unhealthy fats
Make sure to avoid unhealthy fats, i.e. saturated fats. Such fats are found in all animal products and many ready meals, fast food and sweets.
Avoiding saturated fat is easy: all the fats that you can cut or delete are made up of saturated fat! That is butter, lard, bacon, cheese, sausage, palm fat, cocoa butter, deep-frying fat, etc.
Watch out for hidden fats in sausages, ready meals and sweets ! A look at the list of ingredients clears up quickly! Get in the habit of really reading the ingredients list and studying the nutritional information too!
Avoid sugar
Nobody needs sugar, because your body can produce sugar itself from complex carbohydrates (grain products).
Sugar is an unhealthy luxury product that your body uses to make triglycerides if you don’t use it up while exercising.
Honey and glucose are also included ! So avoid sweetening your drinks (coffee, tea, …), do not drink lemonades or other sweet drinks (including fruit juice!) And completely remove sweets and other sugary foods from the menu!
Refrain from alcohol
Triglycerides are made from alcohol in our body. If you do without alcohol (and sugar), you do not provide your body with any building blocks for the formation of triglycerides!
Otherwise it is also smart to reduce your alcohol consumption to an absolute minimum and not to enjoy it in everyday life!
Alcohol itself is a cell poison that is broken down by the liver and has its known effect very quickly in the brain.
Daily consumption of alcohol can lead to physical and psychological dependence, as well as serious illnesses such as cirrhosis of the liver, inflammation of the pancreas, stomach cancer, esophageal cancer and nerve diseases.
Regular consumption of even small amounts of alcohol can also increase the risk of breast cancer.
Eat omega 3 fatty acids
Omega 3 fatty acids are able to lower triglyceride levels. The “healthy omega3” is contained in all vegetable oils and improves the flow properties of the blood. It also lowers blood pressure and lipids, which is why it can prevent hardening of the arteries.
There is a lot of omega 3 in fish (the cooler the water, the fatter the fish, the richer in omega 3) and in domestic oils such as rapeseed oil, soybean oil, walnut oil and flaxseed.
