How to reduce Triglyceride levels without medication.
Triglycerides can cause heart diseases. Maintaining a healthy range of Triglycerides is important for a healthy heart. This article explains various approaches to reducing Triglycerides in the body without medication.
What are Triglycerides?
Excess calories in the food gets converted to Triglycerides during digestion and gets stored in the body as Fat. They are the most common form of fat in the body. They are produced from the excess carbohydrates you eat also sometimes produced within the body. Body produces energy from them and so they are essential for your life. However, excess Triglycerides can lead to many coronary diseases.
The best option to reduce Triglycerides is to make healthy food choices like fish, lean meat, lot of vegetables and fruits etc. Exercise will help you maintain overall health, improve HDL and reduce LDL. Most researches suggest exercises help control Triglycerides. However, in my personal experience, it has low impact on improving my Triglycerides level. But this does not mean I quit exercise. It helps me a lot in improving HDL and reducing LDL.How to reduce Triglyceride levels without medicine?
Medicine is always an option to reduce triglycerides. However, most of the medicines have some or other side effects, which are already proven or yet to be proven. If there is an alternative, I strongly suggest to avoid any kind of medication. This is true for Triglyceride lowering medication too. Most people will be able to reduce the Triglycerides to a normal level by changing food habits and lifestyle.
Best diet to reduce Triglycerides
The following food choices and tips are primarily meant to help you improve the Triglyceride level. However, they are healthy food choices and will help improve your overall health.
Avoid sugar
Avoid sugar and sweet food. Practice drinking coffee, tea, fruit juices etc without sugar. I used to drink a lot of tea and I could not imagine anyone drinking tea without at least 3 spoons of sugar. Now, I have cut down the sugar completely. When I see someone adding sugar to coffee or tea, I feel like they are adding poison to food.
Avoiding sugar doesn't just mean cutting down sugar from your drinks. Sugar is present in most food that you buy in retain stores. When you buy packaged food, look for the label 'Sugar free' or 'No added sugar'.
Avoid cakes, ice creams, candies, soft drinks, other sweet snacks etc. (Of course you can have a piece of your Birthday cake!)
Vegetables
You may have heard it 100 times before. Vegetables are great diet for maintaining a healthy body. Include vegetables that are rich in fiber. Pick different colors of vegetables including beans, broccoli, carrots, beet roots, spinach , cabbage, lettuce etc.
Low fat dairy products
You should limit the intake of dairy products in meals. Always pick low fat dairy products like reduced fat milk.
Lean Meat
If you are a meat lover like me, the news is not too bad for us. You do not need to completely eliminate meat products from our diet to stay in normal Triglyceride range. All we need to do is, trim them down! Remove the visible fat completely from the meat or buy the lean meat.
Prefer white meat over red meat. Chicken is better than beef. Avoid skin since it contain a lot of fat under it.
Fish and fish oils
Omega-3 fatty acids have the ability to reduce Triglycerides in body. Certain fishes like Salmon, Tuna, Sardines etc are very rich in omega-3 and can help you significantly improve cholesterol levels in the body.
If you don't like the taste of fish or can't eat it for religious reasons, you can cheat yourself by eating fish oil supplements. They have the same health benefits as natural fish, sometimes even better. Good pharmaceutical grade fish oils are purified to remove certain contaminations that are found in the real fish, which make them a better choice than natural fish. Most fish oils are safe for children and adults.
Avoid saturated fat and transfat.
Trans fats are added to food to increase the shelf life and avoid requirement for refrigeration. Also, they are found in fast food, snacks, canned food etc. However, they are dangerous for your body. Consumption of trans fats in increased amounts can cause heart diseases. Avoid transfats and hydrogenated oils found in margarine, processed foods, frozen items and and fast food.
Use moderate amounts of Sunflower oil, soybean oil, olive oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil etc for cooking. Avoid oils like coconut oil and palm oil since they get hydrogenated during high heat cooking.
Avoid fried food. Instead bake, broil or steam it.
High fiber foods
Eat lot of high fiber foods like oats, whole grains, green beans, broccoli, spinach, almonds, flaxseeds, rasberries, banana etc.
Alcohol Consumption
Reduce alcohol consumption. One or 2 cups of red vine per day may be helpful, but excess quantity can be harmful.
Quit smoking
Do you smoke? Quit it today. While some other "bad habits" like drinking some health benefits, smoking has no such benefits. It just kills you slowly.
Be active and exercise often
Exercise helps you burn out those excess fat from your body and thus reduce the Triglyceride level indirectly. Even 3 sessions of 30 minutes exercise in a week can make significant difference in your overall health, researches suggest. Exercise helps reducing Triglycerides, LDL and improving HDL. And after all, after a session of exercise, you will feel good which is a major factor in healthy living.Summary: Reducing Triglycerides without medication
Elevated Triglycerides can be controlled by healthy food choices, balanced diet and lifestyle change. Medication should be a last option in achieving your health goals. The diet for lowering triglycerides will not only help you achieve normal Triglyceride ranges, but also have several other benefits like lowering cholesterol, control type 2 diabetes and reduce weight.