HealthCentral: Do You Know Your Triglyceride Level?
HealthCentral recently interviewed cardiologist Janet Wei, MD, associate medical director of the Biomedical Imaging Research Institute and co-director of the Stress Echocardiography Lab in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, about two topics related to heart health: triglycerides and differences in men’s and women’s heart attacks.
Triglycerides are the most common type of fat in the blood. Wei told HealthCentral that triglyceride levels often increase when an individual’s “bad” cholesterol is high and their “good” cholesterol is low.
“High triglycerides increase our risk of plaque buildup in our blood vessels, called atherosclerosis, which leads to heart attacks and strokes,” said Wei, who also is the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women's Cardiovascular Research, Education and Innovation at Cedars-Sinai.
Wei told HealthCentral that fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains and fish—which are part of a Mediterranean-style diet and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet—can help keep the heart healthy.
She also spoke with HealthCentral about how heart attacks can be different for men and women.
“While both women and men can have heart attacks and angina as a result of blocked arteries from cholesterol plaque, we now understand that compared to men, women are more likely to experience heart attacks and angina in the absence of these big blockages,” Wei said.
She told HealthCentral that men and women also can have different heart attack symptoms.
“Women are more likely than men to have other symptoms [than chest pain], such as shortness of breath, nausea, profound fatigue, and back, jaw and neck pain,” Wei said. “Importantly, women may be more likely to use a different description of ‘pain’ when describing their chest discomfort, such as ‘pressure,’ ‘squeezing,’ or ‘burning.’”
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