Is triglycerides carbohydrates?
No, they are not carbohydrates. Triglyceride is another name for
fat. Triglycerides are esters formed from glycerol or
pentan-1,2,3-triol, and one or more fatty acids - long chain
alkanoic or alkenoic acids. Fats and oils from different natural
sources contain different fatty acids. One interesting story about
fats and fatty acids is the story of Lorenzo's oil. Lorenzo Odone
was a little boy diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy (ADL) and
given two years to live. ADL is associated with the build up of
very long chain fatty acids which appear to have a damaging effect
on the myelin sheath of nerve fibres. This damage leads to loss of
function and an irreversible loss of faculties in those afflicted.
Paralysis, blindness and death were the normal outcomes of all boys
diagnosed with ADL. Most unhappily, cognitive function of the brain
seems to be unimpaired so the sufferer finds himself trapped within
an increasingly non-functional body. At the time of Lorenzo Odone's
diagnosis, little was known about the disease, except for the
elevated levels of long chain fatty acids in the blood.
Conventional therapy used nutrition and diet control to eliminate
all sources of these long chain fatty acids in the diet.
Counterintuitively, this regime seemed to increase the levels of
the dangerous long chain fatty acids in Lorenzo's blood. So, his
father, Augusto Odone, and mother Michaela Odone, started to teach
themselves some biochemistry and got together a symposium of many
scientists doing research into ADL and anything that might be
related to it. As a result the Odones decided to load Lorenzo's
diet with a specific oil, derived from olive oil, but modified in a
particular way. This oil, Lorenzo's Oil, seemed effective in
halting the progress of the disease in Lorenzo. It has since been
used, with somewhat limited success in other boys having been
diagnosed with ADL. It is a standard treatment now in
pre-symptomatic boys who carry the ADL gene. Lorenzo died in 2008
at the age of 30 following a bout of pneumonia caused by the
aspiration of food into the lungs, a common cause of death in
patients suffering severe neurological dammage. The Myelin Project
was created by Augusto Odone to coordinate attempts to restore
damaged myelin in patients suffering from ADL and related disorders
such as multiple sclerosis. Lorenzo's mother died in 2002, from
lung cancer. Augusto continues to support the Myelin Project which
he created. Lorenzo outlived his mother by 6 years. Doctors gave
him 2 years to live in 1984. Fats are so interesting!