What Are Triglycerides?

How to Reduce High Triglycerides

Typically, adopting healthy lifestyle choices can help you keep your triglyceride levels in check.

For example, your doctor may recommend:

Limit Sweets and Other Highly Processed Simple Carbohydrates Eating foods high in sugar and simple carbohydrates, like white flour and white rice, can raise your triglycerides.

Swap Foods Rich in Saturated Fat for Vegetable Oil and Omega-3-Rich Foods Saturated fats, which are found in most animal and dairy products, can raise triglyceride levels. In addition, cooking with vegetable oils like olive oil and canola oil can help manage both high triglycerides and high cholesterol. Limiting consumption of beef and pork and eating more foods that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, canned sardines, and mackerel, can also help manage high triglycerides.

Limit or Stop Drinking Alcohol High in both calories and sugar, alcoholic drinks can increase your triglyceride levels, along with having many other negative health effects.

Get Regular Exercise For optimal heart and general health, the American Heart Association recommends getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise each week, preferably split up over several days. If you’re new to a regular exercise routine, low-impact aerobic exercises are a good way to get started.

Maintain a Healthy Weight If you have high triglycerides, even a small amount of weight loss (in the 5- to 10-pound range) can lower your levels.

Medications That Lower Triglycerides

Sometimes, lifestyle changes alone may not lower your triglyceride levels. If that’s the case, your doctor will prescribe a medication, such as:

Statins Also known as HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, statins are a class of drugs that prevent cholesterol from forming in the liver. They are most effective at lowering LDL cholesterol, but they can also lower triglycerides and increase HDL cholesterol.

Fish Oil In medium to large doses, omega-3 fatty acids can help lower triglyceride levels. The most common supplement is over-the-counter fish oil, but your doctor may prescribe a prescription omega-3 supplement.

Fibrates These medications lower overall triglyceride levels by reducing the liver’s production of VLDLs, which carry triglycerides to other areas in your body. They include gemfibrozil (Lopid) and fenofibrate (Fibricor, Tricor). Fibrates may increase your risk of side effects if taken with a statin.

Niacin Also known as nicotinic acid or vitamin B3, niacin is a B vitamin that can raise HDL cholesterol while lowering levels of total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides. Because niacin can interact with other medications and may cause side effects, don’t take over-the-counter niacin without first discussing it with your doctor.