Why Triglycerides are Important

It's a toss up with researchers, but I think more are starting to believe that triglycerides are a more important indicator for "atherogenicity" than cholesterol level. That is because the important facets of your cholesterol reading are somewhat arcane - your LDL particle size is the indicator of importance. Small LDL particles are the ones that stick together to form plaques in your artery walls and harden and narrow them, causing heart attacks. And scientists know that triglyceride levels are inversely related to small LDL particle size, which means the higher your tri's, the smaller your particles.

HDL numbers are important and HDL is the only measure of the two (LDL and HDL) that has a clear connection to heart health: the higher your HDL, the lower your cardiac risk is though to be. That's because only 50 % of people who have heart attacks have elevated LDL levels so conclusions can't really be drawn.

So how much bread should you eat?

Given my post yesterday, we know that flour, rice, potatoes, sugars, etc. raise your blood sugar and all kinds of bad things happen after that.

So how much to eat? As little as you can stand.

My husband eats virtually no carbs in his diet. Rarely does he eat a potato chip. His lipid profile is excellent and he has virtually no circulating triglycerides. Low normal. And we know that low triglycerides means larger sized lipoprotein particles, and less plaque formation.

Get your carbs from vegetables, beans, whole grain breads ( a few slices a day or equivalent).

So eat a slice of bread plus some protein for breakfast.

Eat a slice of bread and some protein and fruit and salad for lunch.

Eat a potato - small, or a half cup of rice, plus meat and vegetables and salad for supper. If you must have dessert, make it sugar free or berries with some whipped cream on them.

For snacks in the morning and afternoon have some raw almonds, some low sugar yogourt or a piece of fruit for snacks. Low glycemic index only.

Take Omega 3 supplements daily. Take vitamin D3. At least 1000 mg. if you live in Canada. I take 2000 mg. per day, and was told by a lipid specialist that I could take 4000 mg. a day with doctor supervision.

The idea is to reduce the inflammation in your body caused by high insulin levels in your blood.

How much bread should you eat?

Do you know that it is the starch in your diet that determines how much fat you store or burn? That is because starch in your bloodstream increases the insulin your body needs. Insulin has a pivotal role in your body's metabolism.

This is from www.healthy-eating-research.com:

How Insulin Affects Fat Storage

According to [Gary] Taubes, research on obesity has found that fat metabolism and storage in the human body is extremely dependent upon the action of insulin, blood sugar (glucose) and a substance called alpha glycerol phosphate, more commonly known as glycerol 3-phosphate.

Fat in the body comes in two main forms:

• Fatty acids, which are a free form of fat which circulates in the bloodstream as fuel and
• Triglycerides, which are a stored form of fat locked in fat cells.

The fatty acids are made of molecules which are small enough to move through cell walls, and so this form of fat flows freely in and out of our fat cells.

Triglyceride fat molecules are much larger. They consist of three fatty acids linked together via a glycerol molecule. Triglycerides cannot move through cell walls, so they become "locked" within the fat cell, once stored inside. They can only be released if they are broken down into fatty acid form.

Fatty acids are always in circulating in the bloodstream. Inside each fat cell, a cyclical process of changing "triglycerides to fatty acids to triglycerides" happens continuously, depending on the needs of the body.

The whole process is driven by the presence of insulin, glucose and glycerol 3-phosphate. Other hormones such as epinephrine, adiponectin, leptin, glucagon and growth hormone also play a part, but insulin will override these if it is present.

Fatty acids are stored in the fat cells in a more solid, locked triglyceride form when a substance called glycerol 3-phosphate is present.

Where does the glycerol 3-phosphate come from? It's a product of carbohydrate metabolism. When carbohydrates are consumed, they are metabolized into simple sugar molecules which then flow into the blood stream. The body responds by releasing insulin to move the sugar out of the blood stream and into the cells.

Once insulin has moved the blood sugar into the cells, the cells use it as a fuel for the cellular activity. When the sugar is burned for fuel, glycerol 3-phosphate is created.

Because the glycerol 3-phosphate is now present, any fatty acids flowing into the fat cell are converted into triglyceride form and stored via a process called esterification.

So, fat storage follows a simple process:

• When blood sugar and insulin are low, stored triglycerides are converted into fatty acids which then flow from the fat cells as needed for fuel.
• When blood sugar and insulin levels are high, insulin moves the glucose into the cells, where it is burned for fuel, creating glycerol 3-phosphate. When glycerol 3-phosphate is present in the cell, fatty acids are converted into triglycerides and stored.

More importantly, the continual presence of insulin, glucose and glycerol 3-phosphate ensures that fat is stored permanently in triglyceride form within the cells.

So the bottom line is that the body stores fat when sugar (in the form of carbohydrate) is available as an alternative fuel.

The more carbohydrates consumed => the more insulin in the blood moving glucose into the cells => the more glycerol 3-phosphate is available => the more fat is stored.

If your goal is to lose fat, you have to reverse this process:

To reduce the amount of fat stored in your fat cells as the permanent triglyceride form, you must reduce the amount of ingested carbohydrates. This in turn reduces the amount of circulating glucose and resting insulin levels, which then reduces the amount of glucose and glycerol 3-phosphate in the cells.

Once insulin levels fall to normal levels, and carbs are limited, the triglycerides are then broken down into fatty acid form so it can flow out of the fat cell, and into the blood stream to be used as fuel.

You cannot store fat in the fat cells without the presence of insulin, glucose and glycerol 3-phosphate.

This is why people can eat many more calories on a low carb diet and still lose weight.

This process and other research on obesity explains why the marker of a Type I diabetic diagnosis is the rapid loss of weight.

Type I Diabetics don't have enough insulin circulating in the blood to move glucose into the cells where it can be burned to create alpha glycerol phosphate. Without insulin, sugar can't be moved into the cells, and glycerol 3-phosphate can't be made, no fat can be stored in triglyceride form.

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Other Research on Obesity

Some of the newest research on obesity involves the following factors:

• Leptin: a hormone produced by adipose (fat) tissue which regulates appetite and weight gain.
• Adiponectin: a hormone produced in abundance by fat tissue. It is associated with glucose and fatty acid metabolism and is a factor in increasing insulin sensitivity of the cells.
• Irvingia gabonensis: an extract of the African mango tree which has been shown to promote weight loss.

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Resources for Further Reading on the Research on Obesity

• What Makes Us Fat And Why Noone Seems to Care A lecture by Gary Taubes given at UC Berkeley in 2007
• Insulin, Leptin, Diabetes, and Aging: Not So Strange Bedfellows by Ron Rosedale
• Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (Vintage) by Gary Taubes.
• American Society of Bariatric Physicians: What is Obesity

So much to learn!

You want to lose weight. You've tried every diet. You don't know what or whom to believe any more. You don't want to spend any more money.

Follow this blog and learn how your body works, what the research says about diet and weight loss, and adjust your diet accordingly.

You, like me, didn't get fat overnight. Neither of us is going to slim down overnight either. But follow the science, and the rest will fall in place.