What Are Triglycerides?

If you regularly eat more calories than you burn, you are more likely to have high triglyceride levels. Having high triglycerides can raise your risk of having a heart attack or stroke.

RELATED: 7 Facts About High Triglycerides You Should Know

Triglyceride Levels: What’s Healthy?

You can find out what your triglyceride levels are by asking your healthcare provider for a lipid panel, a type of simple blood test that measures both cholesterol and triglyceride levels in the blood.

Triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, and LDL cholesterol are measured in milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) of blood. A lipid panel also includes a total cholesterol count.

Your doctor may ask you to fast prior to having your blood drawn for the lipid panel.

Normal: less than 150 mg/dL

Borderline high: 150 to 199 mg/dL

High: 200 to 499 mg/dL

Very high: 500 mg/dL and above

What Causes High Triglycerides?

Eating more calories than you burn consistently can raise your triglyceride levels above normal levels.

Foods particularly rich in saturated fat or highly processed carbohydrates can contribute to abnormal triglyceride levels. Consuming these calorie-rich, easy-to-break-down foods results in more easily released energy, which is then converted to triglycerides and stored in fat cells.

High triglycerides are also a symptom of poorly controlled type 2 diabetes.

Learn More About Surprising Causes of High Triglycerides

How to Reduce High Triglycerides

Typically, adopting healthy lifestyle choices can help you keep your triglyceride levels in check.

Limit Sweets and Other Highly Processed Simple Carbohydrates Eating foods high in sugar and simple carbohydrates, like white flour and white rice, can raise your triglycerides.

Swap Foods Rich in Saturated Fat for Vegetable Oil and Omega-3-Rich Foods Saturated fats, which are found in most animal and dairy products, can raise triglyceride levels. In addition, cooking with vegetable oils like olive oil and canola oil can help manage both high triglyceride and high cholesterol.

Limiting consumption of beef and pork and eating more foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon, canned sardines, and mackerel can also help manage high triglyceride.

Limit or Stop Drinking Alcohol High in both calories and sugar, drinking alcohol can increase your triglyceride levels, along with many other negative health effects.

Maintain a Healthy Weight If you have high triglycerides, even a small amount of weight loss (in the 5- to 10-pound range) can lower your levels.

Medications That Lower Triglycerides

Sometimes, lifestyle changes alone may not lower your triglyceride levels. If that’s the case, your doctor will prescribe a medication, such as:

Fish Oil In large doses, omega-3 fatty acids can help lower triglyceride levels. The most common supplement is over-the-counter fish oil, but omega-3 supplements are also available by prescription.

Fibrates These medications lower overall triglyceride levels by reducing the liver’s production of very-low-density lipoproteins, which are made up mostly of triglycerides. They include gemfibrozil (Lopid) and fenofibrate (TriCor).

Niacin Also known as nicotinic acid, niacin is a B vitamin that can raise HDL cholesterol while lowering levels of total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides.

Your doctor may prescribe niacin if your triglyceride levels are higher than 500 mg/dL.

Since niacin can interact with other medications and may cause side effects, don’t take over-the-counter niacin without first discussing it with your doctor.

Learn More About Cholesterol-Lowering Medications