Triglycerides
Triglycerides is a long word for an increasingly common health problem. Triglycerides are a kind of fat that gets in your bloodstream when your diet is too high in certain kinds of things and too low in others. If you have a high triglyceride levels, what it most likely means is that you have high levels of LDL (bad cholesterol) and low levels of HDL (good cholesterol) in your bloodstream.
High levels of LDL in your bloodstream is a very dangerous thing. What it means is, your arteries are becoming filled with fat. What happens when your arteries become filled with fat? First of all, your bloodstream slows down, way down. When your bloodstream slows down, one of the first signs is chest pain known as angina. You'll feel a squeezing or a sharp pain in your chest when you climb the stairs or do anything that gets your heart rate up. If the levels of triglycerides and LDL in your body get high enough, you could suffer angina even when completely at rest. You could suffer heart attack, stroke, paralysis, death.
Imagining a body high in triglycerides is like imagining a plumbing system high in dirt, leaves, and other debris. A plumbing system left too long untended will start to fill up with gunk from the outside and the inside. A good example is uneaten food from dinner that's allowed to go down the sink. Potatoes, bits of meat, carrots, bread - these swirl down the sink and eventually get clogged in the pipes. When there's a clog, the water backs up, the pipes break.
So it is with your body. When certain kinds of foods go down your throat day after day, your system of pipes (arteries) becomes clogged with them, or rather with the fat that they contain. Your blood becomes sluggish, slow. It creeps along, unable to reach the heart and brain as quickly, smoothly, and effectively as it used to. Eventually, it can slow down so much that it forms into clots, and then, goodbye - blood clots are what brings about severe heart attacks and stroke.
Generally, people with high cholesterol have high triglycerides. People who are severely overweight, and also diabetes sufferers, often have high triglycerides. People who suffer from heart disease often have high triglycerides.
These things are very serious indeed, yet high triglycerides are a fairly easy problem to correct, and it all comes down to having the correct diet.
High triglyceride levels are caused mainly by too many sugars and too many grains in your diet. To begin lowering triglyceride levels immediately, all that you have to do is begin to eat less sugar and less grains. There is medicine available for people with high triglyceride levels, but medicine can be expensive, and you have another option that's available (and cheap) right in your local grocery store.
Eating a lot of green, leafy vegetables has been shown to lower triglyceride levels. Munch them up raw, put them in a salad, put them in a soup, eat them however you want, just eat them! That, and less sugars and grains, will start lowering your triglyceride levels right away.
It takes a lot of self-discipline, but it's well worth it. Lowering triglyceride levels will decrease your risk of heart attack and stroke. It will make you more alert, make you sleep better, feel better, put you in better moods. Lowering your triglyceride levels will most likely lower your LDL levels as well, as both problems require similar remedies. More exercise, more healthy food, and less of the foods full of empty calories are the answer to lowering triglyceride levels.