Triglycerides

[mig]

Wondering if someone has experienced high levels of triglycerides and if soft or hard training and special diet for a practitioner has helped. Or do you slow down, loose weight and rely mostly of western medicine as lipitor or other medicine.

Thanks

[Lee Chiang Po]

Wondering if someone has experienced high levels of triglycerides and if soft or hard training and special diet for a practitioner has helped. Or do you slow down, loose weight and rely mostly of western medicine as lipitor or other medicine.

Thanks

Lipitor won't help you there. Triglycerides are simple sugar fats that you produce from eating carbohydrates, mostly sugars. A single glazed donut will jump it up by 400 points. The fat that collects around your belly starts out as triglyceride, and when there is a surplus it stores in little sacks on different parts of the body. Fats that you eat will turn into something else, but will not turn into fats. Fat will not make fat. I don't think vegetable fats are good for you either. Especially corn oils.
Fat people usually have high triglyceride. Skinny people can have, but usually don't. A good way to learn what to eat and what not to eat would be to go to a grocery store and follow a fat person around and see what they toss into the buggy. Follow a lean person around and see what they toss into theirs. I promise you will see a difference between the types of foods they eat. It used to be that people were prone to being fat if it was in the family. Not so though. It is the way the family eats, and when the daughters get married they cook like mamma, and the sons demand food like momma cooked. The keep the fat tradition going. You can alter that by simply altering the diet.

[IronFist]

It used to be that people were prone to being fat if it was in the family. Not so though. It is the way the family eats, and when the daughters get married they cook like mamma, and the sons demand food like momma cooked. The keep the fat tradition going. You can alter that by simply altering the diet.

It is far more dependent on genetics that you're making it sound.

Diet and exercise function within the parameters of one's genetics.

No one wants to admit this because it isn't PC.

[mig]

It is far more dependent on genetics that you're making it sound.

Diet and exercise function within the parameters of one's genetics.

No one wants to admit this because it isn't PC.

Here is the problem. I noticed that true, I was eating too much sugar added products, what's not, and then salt in everything. I even lost weight to see if that helped but the more I learn the more I see that nutrition is the key as the more calories I don't burn the worst it becomes. I am going for fish, vegetables and cutting all sugars as much as I can but haven't found the good diet that will work and the type of exercises including forms, conditioning and stretching.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[Lee Chiang Po]

Here is the problem. I noticed that true, I was eating too much sugar added products, what's not, and then salt in everything. I even lost weight to see if that helped but the more I learn the more I see that nutrition is the key as the more calories I don't burn the worst it becomes. I am going for fish, vegetables and cutting all sugars as much as I can but haven't found the good diet that will work and the type of exercises including forms, conditioning and stretching.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Nutrition is mostly a lifestyle with most people. The lady across the street had to go into assisted living conditions, and I helped her brother clean out the house. Her pantry and fridge was loaded with nothing but carbs. Everything carb. poor woman weighed in at 255 pounds and was shorter than myself.
Meats, poultry, and I think mostly fish, but most people only eat it once a week or so. Green vegetables, and fruits like apples and hard fruit that is similar. You need lots of fiber, and you do need carbs, but you can get them from the vegs. If you eat all the meat you want at a meal, a green salad, green beens or spinach or other green vegetable, followed with a small desert, you will lose weight without much exercise. The calories you consume will not rush to the waistline.
You would be amazed at how satisfying a table spoon of icecream on a table spoon of cake is. And if you eat it behind a big meat and green vegetable meal it will not spike your insuline. Like I said, just go to a big chain grocery store and follow people around and watch what they put into their basket. First do a fat person, then a lean person. Sometimes a lean person might also eat carbs, but they usually eat more of the none carb stuff, or carbs that are not easy to extract.
Some people are actually prone to being fat, but that is not really a genetic issue I don't believe. It is more likely a condition like hypothyroidism. Now that might be a family issue. But you can control it through diet most of the time. If it is the thyroid, you can get treatment for that. Just remember, diets do not work. Diets usually require you to deny yourself. That gets old quickly and people simply stop. You can change your eating lifestyle slowly, and after a while it becomes like a habit.
Get the Southbeach Diet book. It is more of a lifestyle change really, and it can help you get started on the way. There are lots of other books on the same subject out there, but they may be a bit too radical for most people, even if they are as close to accurate as you will get concerning the human diet. eating a whole bowl of Icecream at one shot, drinking huge glasses of orange juice at one time, a soda contains 14 to 16 teaspoons of processed sugar, and breads and bread products are what is going to kill you. Look at a table spoon of sugar. It is 3 teaspoons of sugar. To extract that much sugar from sugar cane you would need several bushels squeezed out and cooked away. You could not eat that much sugar cane in a week. It would destroy your mouth and guts. And there is about 5 times that much sugar in a single canned soda.
We are natural animals of this world, just like all other natural animals. And a natural diet is what we would thrive on if we remembered exactly what a natural diet consisted of. Millions of years of hunting and gathering, and then suddenly we are eating everything a man can come up with. It is no wonder the world is so obese and sickly. Go to the mall, or to walmart, and count the people entering or leaving, and on the other side of that paper, count the skinny ones coming or going. You will see what I am talking about.

[GLW]

High triglycerides has a very big genetic component as does high cholesterol.

Having said this, ways to help with both include :

Exercise - you HAVE to get up and burn sugars by exercising.
Losing weight if you are overweight - fat and sugars go hand in hand most often.

Diet : this is the tricky one. First, you have to cut out things that have sugars but are empty calories...like sodas. You also need to limit alcohol intake and starchy foods. Increase the natural sugars from fruits - IN MODERATION.

Read labels. HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) is in everything. It is a sweetener AND a preservative. But, you don't get the preservative part without accepting the sweetener part too. So a normal US diet will overload you in sugars that you are not even aware of very quickly. Reading the labels and eliminating foods with HFCS can help since the goal is to get control of when and how you take in sugars.

Then you have the medical route. Fenofibrate is a common drug used to lower triglycerides. It is often used in conjunction with things like Crestor or Lipitor since folks with high triglycerides often have high cholesterol as well.

You can also add things like CoQ10, Flax seed, Omega 3, Niacin (not the no-flush variety since it does not do much for triglycerides or cholesterol). All of those things impact cholesterol and tend to also impact triglycerides.

Also, increasing intake of all types of vegetables is a good idea as well.

[mawali]

Wondering if someone has experienced high levels of triglycerides and if soft or hard training and special diet for a practitioner has helped. Or do you slow down, loose weight and rely mostly of western medicine as lipitor or other medicine.

Thanks

There are some people (a minority) who can eat what they want with no problem. You have a group on the opposite end of the curve (bell curve) who will experience the bad effects immediately. The rest (80-90%) have to rely on diet, exercise and lifestyle to reverse the bad effects of our own doing keeping in mind that alot fo food products have this high fructose element that is bad for everyone.
Moderation / balance is great per intake of meat (less), vegetables (more), water instead of cola products. Losing weight is a misnomer though it is a consequence of losing body fat but WHR and BMI should work together to give you an objective reference as opposed to just one index of health.

"Soft' training is useless and hard trainign is extreme so seek the middle path!

[mig]

High triglycerides has a very big genetic component as does high cholesterol.

Having said this, ways to help with both include :


Then you have the medical route. Fenofibrate is a common drug used to lower triglycerides. It is often used in conjunction with things like Crestor or Lipitor since folks with high triglycerides often have high cholesterol as well.

You can also add things like CoQ10, Flax seed, Omega 3, Niacin (not the no-flush variety since it does not do much for triglycerides or cholesterol). All of those things impact cholesterol and tend to also impact triglycerides.

Also, increasing intake of all types of vegetables is a good idea as well.

It has been a learning curve you hit it in the nail. I was not really convinced taking medicine prescribed by the doctor but I started noticing that whatever you find in the market is full of junk including sugar and salt. Even though I was careful, I was not careful enough to check every label. I am still slender, lost some muscle but planning in working out harder to keep a better balance and eating more vegetables. If you or somebody else had similar experience, I would like to hear more about it.

Thanks a bunch,

Mig

[GLW]

Personally, I have been dealing with triglycerides and cholesterol levels for a long time.

When I was younger, I could do the triglycerides mainly with diet by limiting sugars and eating more regularly.

As I have gotten older, I am finding that genetics is playing a larger role. I have roughly 1/4 makeup of Native American. The genetic predisposition of Native Americans tends to be towards higher cholesterol and high triglycerides. It has to do with a long history of a native diet of grains, vegetables like squash, beans and such, fish, and game when available. Retention of cholesterol and sugars in the native environment - feast or famine as you will - was a survival adaptation. However, when the diet moved away from the traditional things and to potatoes, refined sugars, beef, etc... The need for retaining cholesterol for lean times went away and then you end up with a diet that puts junk into you anyway.

I was really surprised to find that the incidence of high cholesterol and triglycerides is a real health problem.

Crestor and Lipitor both work hard on the liver. Guess what, if you have any potential liver issues (like natives often do) you may not be able to take Crestor or Lipitor due to side effects.

Now, if you can go to a diet heavy on veggies, whole grains, fish, and a limited level of low cholesterol meats like buffalo, and you read the labels and avoid HFCS and limit white sugars, you MAY be able to do it with diet and exercise.

I am not a great fan of fish...so one big strike there.

The supplements help. Fenofibrate is one for lowering triglycerides that seems to help and has fewer side effects than many things...but does nothing for cholesterol.

You can get timed release niacin for that - but you need a good brand that releases small amounts over time. Niacin causes flushing (like a hot flash with reddening of the skin) so you don't want a large release at one time unless you like feeling like you are on fire and itching at the same time.

The more expensive timed-release niacins tend to release in smaller amounts more uniformly. You still get a slight flush but it is not that bad.

There IS a prescription version for niacin but it is just a higher dose of a very good timed-release formula. You can get much the same results with an over the counter version.

Triglycerides are actually easier to deal with than cholesterol...so if that is the only one you have, it is not that bad.

[Dr.Harut]

Genetics of course play a role, also lets not forget the body types: ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph.

Personally, I am meat eating person..a pound daily with bowl of green salad with dressing of 1-2 table spoons of olive oil...little pita bread...sometimes go a 10 day only on fruits....rarely pastries...never use commercial syrups...don't have high level triglycerides and my LDL cholesterol is 85 and triglycerides 90, HDL 65.

I agree with what Lee Chiang Po and GLW said

[GLW]

AND people who can do that (eat anything they want and get away with it) really ANNOY me.

[Dr.Harut]

AND people who can do that (eat anything they want and get away with it) really ANNOY me.

They are the mesomorph type...they can reduce weight and build muscle easier than the other types.

[IronFist]

Ectomorphs are the ones who can eat whatever they want and not gain weight.

Mesomorphs can get fat if they try, but they an also lose the fat pretty easily.

Something that may help with sugar intake is getting in the habit of drinking water (not bottled water; it's expensive!). A lot of people's only fluid intake comes in the form of soda. Soda is pretty bad for you, and is high in sugar.

Some people try to remedy this by drinking diet soda. Not only does diet soda taste gross (unless you've become used to the aspartame taste which I've heard happens to the extent that people who regularly drink diet soda no longer like the taste of regular soda), but there was some study done where people drinking diet soda had a harder time losing weight than people who didn't due to some chemical property of aspartame.

Drink water as your only beverage except when you are drinking alcohol

Seriously, a can of soda is like 120 calories or something. Three of them a day is 360, or just over 2,500 per week. Stop it. I know of people who drink six cans a day.

Not to be preachy, but I've pretty much only been drinking water (not including alcohol) for years, and a while ago I noticed that I kinda stopped liking soda. The sugar makes my tongue and teeth feel all gross and if I have a can of soda, I feel like I need to go brush my teeth afterward.

Same thing with sugar in general. I stopped eating dessert type foods years ago, and I don't even crave them anymore. People are like "do you want a piece of cake?" and I'm like "not really." Sometimes I'll take a bite and it tastes good, but after a bite or two I'm finished.

I've heard other people say your body will adapt like that if you cut out high sodium. I wouldn't know. I love sodium. Salty pretzels, ramen noodles... om nom nom!

Oh, only drinking water is better for your teeth, too

[Lee Chiang Po]

I drink a lot of water too. When I stopped eating sugars and went to drinking lots of water I started a slow weight loss. Not even trying. I craved carbs like a drug. I dropped my cholesterol from about 500 down to less than 100, but my bad was higher than the good. My doctor and I was discussing this and he told me that if I would partake alchohol in small amounts it would reverse this. He was right. I know that it is also considered bad for you, but it actually reversed my cholesterol levels. I have noticed that I do not retain water on the low carb diet as well. This was a problem with me. I love donuts and pastries, ice cream, cake and all the good tasting stuff like everyone else, so what I have done is to change the way I eat it. I have found that I can take a table spoon of cake or ice cream, or both, and eat it after a large meal it will hide itself in all the other stuff and will not spike my insulin. It has no effect on me and I do not gain weight. I lost a large amount of weight without even trying on the southbeach diet, and it helped me to adjust to a new eating lifestyle. I had to do it or I would end up dying. I have had 9 heart attacks, 17 angiplasties sp? and have a number of stints in my chest and abdomen. I have managed to survive for 22 years after all that. I plan on going for another 22 years. My doc said that with my new eating habits and taking care of myself like I do, I am actually healthier today than I was 25 years ago. I was trying my best to die back then, and today I just keep rolling along in seemingly good health.