Triglycerides: The Risk Factor Nobody Talks About

With all the news and consumer advertising about the dangers of high cholesterol, many people forget another major threat to heart health: triglycerides.
A recent survey of 2,000 patients found that just 13 percent of them knew the triglyceride goals they should be aiming for. And even though almost 90 percent of the surveyed doctors knew that triglycerides are an important risk factor for heart disease, only half of the patients surveyed remembered their doctors ever discussing triglycerides with them.
With the fixation by doctors and the public on good and bad cholesterol, you'd at least think that the cholesterol targets would be well known. Not so — only 35 percent of the surveyed patients knew the optimal level for blood cholesterol.
Are high triglycerides worth worrying about? Yes, they are. A recent analysis of 29 studies involving over 260,000 participants showed that people in the upper third of triglyceride levels had between a 58 percent and a 76 percent greater risk of coronary heart disease than those in the lowest third of triglyceride levels.
For many years, high triglycerides were thought to be a greater danger for women than for men; however, this new study found an equal risk for both men and women.
In case you've forgotten, or never knew it, normal triglycerides are defined as less than 150 milligrams per deciliter of blood (mg/dL). A survey done a few years ago estimated that more than 35 percent of all men and 25 percent of all women in the United States had triglyceride levels that were higher than the recommended goal.
The number of people with elevated triglyceride levels is rising for several reasons. First, high triglyceride levels are an important component of the metabolic syndrome, which affects nearly half of people aged 50 or older in the U.S.
Second, overweightedness and obesity, which affect over 60 percent of the American population, are often associated with elevated triglyceride levels. Third, high triglycerides are the most common blood lipid abnormality found in the more than the 18 million Americans with type 2 diabetes. One bit of good news: losing weight almost always lowers triglycerides in overweight people.
Simeon Margolis, M.D., Ph.D
Trích trong Yahoo Health
on Sun, Apr 01, 2007