Healthy Hearts, Healthy Relationships With High Triglycerides

High triglycerides (HTG) can cause life-threatening complications if left untreated. Medical treatments for HTG primarily consist of lifestyle changes including diet and exercise. These are essential for reducing triglyceride levels, improving overall health outcomes, and ensuring that patients with HTG are able to live healthy and independent lives.

Eating more heart-healthy foods, limiting high fat and high sugar foods, reducing alcohol and tobacco consumption, and exercising regularly can all support healthier triglyceride levels.

But changing long-established habits isn't always easy! That’s where our social support systems come in.

Chronic health conditions don’t just affect us!

Receiving an HTG diagnosis can affect our relationships as well. Medical conditions rarely only affect just the person with the condition. Instead, our relationships are often forced to evolve when our life circumstances change. In this regard, partners, family members, and close friends become part of the health journey (sometimes in helpful ways, and other times not so much).

Food means connection

Food is connected to homestyle comfort, culture, traditions, holidays, and celebrations. It then makes sense that it can feel isolating to change our diets from everyone else’s, even if it is to improve our health and long-term quality of life. It is still a difficult choice to make alone.

However, if friends and family really care, they will do what they can to support their loved one with high triglycerides... Because if they really care about you, they will want you to be able to live a long, healthy, and happy life.

A heart-healthy adventure ahead

Rather than viewing lifestyle changes as lifestyle restrictions, I find it so much more helpful and fun to focus on discovering new meals, recipes, and traditions. Adopting new and healthier traditions can be a great way to integrate healthier habits that stick for everyone.

For example, instead of watching football on television on Thanksgiving, encouraging the family to get outside and play football on the lawn could be a smart, fun, and effective way to facilitate exercise on an otherwise calorie-heavy day.

When loved ones sabotage you, intentionally or not

Family and friends can be helpful when encouraging your healthier habits, but they may also be detrimental to your progress when actively not supporting you. For example, making statements like "It's just one slice of cake — it won’t hurt you," or "You deserve a treat, it’s fine!" can be well-intentioned, but still make sticking to necessary lifestyle changes so much more difficult!

Similarly, it can feel disempowering and shameful when loved ones take it upon themselves to monitor your food choices. These are the kind of social circumstances when living with HTG that can create tension in social dynamics and setbacks in treatment.

Keeping lines of communication open

Open communication about what feels supportive — and what doesn't — can help everyone work together toward shared health goals. Defining the lines between support and personal autonomy can help prevent these kinds of situations from becoming sources of conflict, and instead help them become opportunities for further understanding and connection between friends, partners, or family members.

How has your condition impacted your relationships?

What kind of changes did you notice in your relationships after you were diagnosed with high triglycerides or another condition, if any? What kind of support, or lack of support, did you receive from your inner circle? Share in the comments below.