Elevated Triglycerides

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Elevated Triglycerides

Postby hartysmith1 » Mon Mar 02, 2015 10:33 am

I had been on a vegan diet for 6 months and my blood level for cholesterol , and LDL was down , but triglycerides went from 120 to 225. I am 61 y.o. and never in my life had high triglycerides. My fat intake must not have been adequate? ( body in starvation mode)
My weight also decrease from 118 to 110.I added chicken back into the diet and follow up triglycerides return to normal of 106.My weight also returned to normal. What is next step?
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Re: Elevated Triglycerides

Postby colonyofcells » Mon Mar 02, 2015 11:52 am

Can read the starch solution book or read the free program in this web site drmcdougall com. Can also relax and stop monitoring the blood for a few months. There's no need to micromanage the numbers from blood tests and most of these blood tests are not necessary.
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Re: Elevated Triglycerides

Postby Gweithgar » Mon Mar 02, 2015 12:15 pm

My experience has been similiar: nice low cholesterol, sky-rocketing trigs. My doctor said not to worry about the trigs alone. When we are losing body fat, especially if we are cleaning out a fatty liver (me), trigs are going to go up for awhile. If you can work in some extra walking/cardio work you will burn them up faster. They should come down as your weight (and liver?) normalize.
Cet animal est tres mechant; quand on l'attaque, il se defend
(This animal is very wicked; if attacked it defends itself)
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Re: Elevated Triglycerides

Postby colonyofcells » Mon Mar 02, 2015 12:37 pm

I've also heard that triglycerides can be burned up by exercise. Can try exercise after each meal. Both aerobic exercise and weight exercise are good for burning up fuel like triglycerides.
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Re: Elevated Triglycerides

Postby dteresa » Mon Mar 02, 2015 12:43 pm

You mean all you did was add chicken and the rest of the diet stayed the same and this drastically lowered your trigs?

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Re: Elevated Triglycerides

Postby pundit999 » Mon Mar 02, 2015 1:15 pm

Before I adopted this way of eating, my triglycerides were very high (I think > 200). I was told to consume fish oil tablets to lower them and I took them for over 10 years. They easily knocked off triglycerides by 50% to be in the normal range.

But I did develop heart disease even after 10 years of normal triglycerides and the total cholesterol around 200.

I would not worry about the triglycerides value. Just follow this path with the following tweaks if you not already adopted them:

-Eat less fruits,
-no juices or smoothies of any kind,
-no sugar,
-less alcohol,
-less simple carbs like white bread
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Re: Elevated Triglycerides

Postby Ern2Win » Mon Mar 02, 2015 2:42 pm

hartysmith1 wrote:I had been on a vegan diet for 6 months and my blood level for cholesterol , and LDL was down , but triglycerides went from 120 to 225. I am 61 y.o. and never in my life had high triglycerides. My fat intake must not have been adequate? ( body in starvation mode)
My weight also decrease from 118 to 110.I added chicken back into the diet and follow up triglycerides return to normal of 106.My weight also returned to normal. What is next step?



Vegan diet? Are you following the McDougall diet? What do you eat? How many fruit servings per day? Any unrefined carbs?
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Re: Elevated Triglycerides

Postby hartysmith1 » Mon Mar 02, 2015 4:25 pm

I had been following Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn diet. It follows Dr. McDougall's diet. I also read the China Study by Campbell. I eat whole foods, plant based diet. No dairy and no processed foods, and Alaskan King Salmon ( no farm raised) I have always eaten 1800 calorie diet for my size and weight. During the 6 months trial , I lowered the fats to 10% of total daily calories. protein being 10-15% and carbs. roughly 45-50%. Everything is organic, nothing sweetened. I believe my body produced the fats(triglycerides) thinking it was compensating for the decrease in intake of fats. Yes, I kept the diet the same , but added organic skinless chicken breast( only once a week), and increased the fat intake to 15-20%. So, now I would like to try again , no meat, but unsure of direction on fats.
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Re: Elevated Triglycerides

Postby dailycarbs » Mon Mar 02, 2015 4:27 pm

hartysmith1 wrote:During the 6 months trial , I lowered the fats to 10% of total daily calories. protein being 10-15% and carbs. roughly 45-50%.


Your numbers don't add up.
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Re: Elevated Triglycerides

Postby hartysmith1 » Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:41 am

Yes, the numbers including the % of sugar and other nutrients will total my numbers, but I am mainly focusing on the percentage of fats, protein and carbs.
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Re: Elevated Triglycerides

Postby Steve » Wed Mar 04, 2015 5:37 pm

My Triglycerides went up to like 580 something. I told my doctor I would get the triglycerides controlled with diet and exercise. He said I could not that I would be on medication the rest of my life. I got rigorous on the program, exercised and stopped eating sweet fruit after reading advice on this site and in the Healthy Heart Book. Turns out people who are sensitive to triglycerides like me produce triglycerides in response to sweet fruit or Fructose. I got my triglycerides under 150. You see the Maximum Weight loss program recommended no more than two fruits a day. Well not to be deterred I found Giant Apples that were like four apples each. That made my triglycerides rise. When I stopped sweet fruit they went down. I define sweet fruit as like peaches, apples, watermelon and so on. I define unsweet fruit as any veggie with seeds. I.e. tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and the like. It is sad that I react to fruit that way. You may have been really getting into the fruit too. Oh by the way, did you have a fasting blood test? In the McDougall Program for a Healthy Heart these ideas are fully discussed. If you do not have a copy there is a searchable PDF download available as e-book on this site for $10, no shipping.
https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/shop ... thy-heart/
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Re: Elevated Triglycerides

Postby Jumpstart » Wed Mar 04, 2015 8:27 pm

Your trigs went up because you're insulin resistant. That means your body can no longer handle carbs very well. It handles fruit even worse. Yes, eating more fat will drop your trigs, but you'll doom yourself to a life time of insulin resistance and eventually type 2 and the heart disease that comes with it. Eating all that fat is what made you insulin resistant in the first place. Dr. Dean Ornish talks about really tough cases of high trigs taking over a year of proper low fat eating to normalize. Do yourself, your kidneys, liver and heart a real big favor and stop the damage while it's still reversible.
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