All this discussion of high triglycerides reminded me of a story. After college, I was working on some research studies in the area of preventive medicine (primarily diabetes and cardiovascular disease). One day I was meeting with the cardiologist who was in charge of one of the studies and he got a call from a patient during our meeting. When he got off the phone, he told me that this was a guy whose triglycerides were 8000 (yes, that's eight THOUSAND, it's not a typo). I hadn't realized they could get that high! He also said that blood drawn from a patient with that kind of triglyceride level looks a bit like cream of tomato soup (yuck)!