
“With food and drinks like breads, rice, pasta, and soda, these get converted in your liver to fat, and triglycerides are often affected by that,” he says. Yu-Ming Ni, a cardiologist at MemorialCare Heart and Vascular Institute at Orange Coast Medical Center in California. Most notably, triglyceride levels tend to be significantly influenced by your carbohydrate consumption, says Dr. That said, seeing a high reading once doesn’t necessarily mean you have to pack your overnight bag for a hospital stay. Usually, issues with the pancreas occur when triglyceride levels have been high for a long time, and these can result in hospitalization if inflammation becomes acute. If triglycerides reach the “high” or “severe” categories, you may need to switch medications to see if that returns your levels to normal.Īccording to the National Institutes of Health, untreated or uncontrolled high triglyceride levels-a condition called hypertriglyceridemia-may increase your risk of coronary heart disease and stroke, as well as acute pancreatitis. These include antipsychotic drugs, beta blockers, corticosteroids, and oral estrogen, which are all widely used. Some medications can temporarily raise triglycerides as well, Giaimo adds. “At the very least, that number should be a starting point for figuring out what might be going on, especially if it’s raising other health risks.” “When we see a very high reading, that can be a sign of another problem, such as hypothyroidism, kidney disease, or poorly controlled diabetes,” he says. An elevated reading is often like a clue that something is going awry in the body, he says. Triglyceride levels are often higher in men than women, and they tend to increase with age. Antonio Giaimo, an assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. However, they can also be elevated without any of these factors since genetics can play a role, says Dr. High triglycerides are often accompanied by other risk factors for heart disease, such as high cholesterol, diabetes, and smoking. Read More: What to Know About High Cholesterol in Kids Potential causes and concerns Since that raises serious health risks, it’s essential to monitor how triglyceride numbers are changing, and if necessary, to implement treatment options-especially lifestyle changes. When the number creeps up, even to borderline high, it can indicate that there’s a problem with how lipids are being processed in the body. population had abnormal triglyceride levels. In a 2020 report, the National Institutes of Health estimated that between 25% to 30% of the U.S. A normal reading is less than 150 milligrams per deciliter (in a lab report, this would be “150 mg/dL”) while a severe reading is considered anything over 500 mg/dL. Triglyceride readings are sorted into four categories: normal, borderline high, high, and severe.
