High Triglycerides

Well, I guess his BP is doing just fine tonight!

Switching subjects briefly - I just learned in the last year or two that there are different kinds of flour tortillas, your basic sonoran, which I'm used to - or texan. Turns out I despise the texan, bulbous flavorless piffle, who knew? And that is what is made around here. I could give links another time. Curious what brand you get, in Boston.

My local Albertson's just cut out Gallegos, my last best hope for supermarket tortillas. Apparently I was the only buyer.

The tortillas in the fridge right now are Maria's and Ricardo's. I just sort of look for the kind that aren't perfectly round.

I'll refrain from listing tortilla companies that suck.
For now.

Will post, best on a new thread, about the whole subject.

That'd be fun! There's a whole three-way American Mexican food war so far as I can see it. There's Cali-Mex, Tex-Mex and New Mex. We could debate the finer differences and swap recipes!

And, I figure, Mex-Mex.
FBaezer can weigh in, and I listen.

Well, not to close off anyone, but to push people from different regions to post.

Plus, there is probably San Francisco mex play. Past fusion horror, some sharp efforts in small restaurants. SF is not LA.

Mex-Mex would be a great addition to the list! Let's keep SF for the Asian food thread.

I follow SF mexican restaurants... wrongo to discount them.

I could shed batches of links.

One thing that still mystifies me: Why are your triglycerides be so high if your blood sugar and cholesterol are so low? Triglycerides are made of blood sugar and the fat you eat. So if the inputs to producing triglycerides are low, your body shouldn't be churning up triglycerides at an unusually high rate.

One solution to the mystery would be if the reason wasn't high production, but low consumption of triglycerides by your body -- if for some reason, your body had reduced the rate at which it's converting triglycerides into body fat. Maybe you should ask your doctor if this reduced conversion rate could be a problem (Google didn't turn up much for me.) And maybe it would help if you burned some more body fat with light cardio workouts. In other words, you may want to hike more often.

Your total cholesterol ( HDL + LDL + TG/3 ) is high= 243.

You want total cholesterol to be less than 200.

By the way, you'll notice that in the calculation of total-cholesterol, a value for TG is included. This is standard practice.

The latest issue of the JAMA ( Journal of the American Medical Association )
has an interesting article ( summarized ) on the significance of high TG levels and their treatment. The summary may have come from the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Roger - Time zones exist in GMT + 12, +13, +14 (and half-hour intervals when applicable, except on the poles). Wouldn't want to confuse you further with a link, but someone else - probably unencumbered by abundant supplies of cheap wit - might actually want to know:


http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/info/timezone.htm

Dietary fat doesn't end up as fat in the blood; only dietary sugars can do that. The triglyceride chains of fats and sugars are (molecularly) of considerably different length - you knew that, as does anyone with basic training in organic chemistry. Note a caveat: that statement excludes terminal metabolic illnesses, liver cancer and other such serious illnesses.

I was surprised to hear that, so I double-checked it with printouts of my own bloodwork. The result is inconsistent with what Miller just said: True enough, my German and my American laboratory both give an upper limit of 200 for total cholesterol. But they also both do not include Triglycerides in their definition of total cholesterol.

And that's how it should be: Triglycerides are emphatically not a form of cholesterol. Indeed, we're talking about totally different classes of substances here: Cholesterol is a steroid, whereas Triglycerides are fats. Lumping together LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides under "total cholesterol" makes absolutely no sense. You might as well take Indian elephants, African elephants, and rabbits, then count them together as "total elephants". A quick look at the chemical structures will show you just how different the molecules are. They look nothing alike:


General chemical structure of triglycerides (source: Wikipedia)


Chemical structure of cholesterol (source: Wikipedia)

On further googling, it seems the American Heart Association has a definition that agrees with Miller's.

http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=180

I didn't say it does. I said triglycerides are made from it. Triglycerides are the fats that and up in the blood.

Aha, Littlek, I found it, the Bittman article on less pasta, more vegetables:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/dining/17mini.html

Let me know if you can't access it and I'll send you a copy by pm, and/or some of the recipes.

Aside from diet, other factors I've read about that affect triglycerides are:
Amount of exercise (more exercise reduces TGs)
Birth control pills, which I take, may raise TGs
Kidney disease (they don't pull TGs out properly?)

Anything else besides diet anyone can think of?

Osso, I know about that tactic. My favorite sauce is pesto. You can't really use more of it. But, what I do tri to dio (and I was doing this before I had the bloodwork done) is add spinach to the dish.

I will definitely experiment with the minestri. But, what about risotto? I love risotto. I do add vegies to it. i often add beans or ground nuts to it. But, You can't really change the fact that its base is white rice. I guess I will just have to eat less of it and use it as a side dish.

I agree there's not much of a way to lose rice from risotto..

Not really a tactic, but a way to eat less of it - I used to make up a batch of arborio, not as risotto, just as regular rice, and make arancini, otherwise known as suppli al telefono.. without the final frying part. Just stuffing "little oranges" (a palm full of rice) with a good string type mozzarella - a half or 3/4" cube, and (can't remember the recipe, thinking dipping in egg, then rolling in bread crumbs, and baking them, where they'd somewhat lose roundness but not entirely, eating one, then freezing the rest, eating one every so often after heating in microwave. There would be a fresh tomato/basil/olive oil salsa for a dip.. So, no less rice, but less at a time.