How To Lower Cholesterol Through Diet
Posted by Owen Jones in Uncategorized, tags: cholesterol, cooking, diabetes, diet, exercise, fitness, food, health, nutrition, other, recipes, supplements, Uncategorized, weight lossI have heard individuals say that they would like to lower their cholesterol levels in order to lose weight. The reason for lowering your cholesterol levels is not because you want to lose weight. That is putting the cart before the horse. You almost certainly just have a couple of grammes of cholesterol in your body, so reducing that amount is not going to help you look any trimmer.
The reason for losing weight can include wanting to reduce your cholesterol levels; it can also include wanting to lower your blood pressure; it can include wanting to take weight off your joints and it can include wanting to look healthier.
But there are several other reasons as well: losing weight will raise your general feeling of well-being, making you feel better and happier in general and reduce your likelihood of getting diabetes.
This piece is concerned with cholesterol and how to lower the amount of cholesterol in your blood. So, first of all, what is cholesterol? The first thing to do is clear up the misconception that all cholesterol is bad. It is not. There are two kinds of cholesterol: LDL cholesterol is bad for you for sure, but HDL cholesterol is useful for you because it helps mop up LDL.
In fact, not all LDL is bad either, your body needs some LDL to create bile, vitamin D and maintain the correct balance of hormones, particularly in women. So LDL gets a very bad press, but it is not a total villain. The problems start if you have too much. It is like guests at a party, you have to have some, but too many and there are problems.
If you have excess LDL, it can obstruct your arteries, causing your heart to have to work more, raising blood pressure and consequently increasing the danger of kidney failure, strokes and heart attacks.
How do you get too much LDL? Most LDL is taken into our bodies by eating saturated fats (animal fats) and hydrogenated or trans fats (normally discovered in junk food).
HDL picks up our excess LDL and transports it back to the liver where it is dealt with. HDL is to be discovered in nuts, grains, pulses, fish oil and mono-unsaturated or poly-unsaturated fats. Therefore, the strategy in a nutshell is, if you are trying to lower your LDL level through diet is to eat less animal fat as found in red meat and dairy produce and eat more vegetarian food and fish.
In particular, LDL is to be found in high quantities in beef, pork, milk, cheese, butter, cream, hamburgers, hot dogs, potato crisps, potato chips, et cetera and HDL is to be found in fresh fruit and vegetables, nuts, fish, whole grains, soya et cetera.
There are also a couple of myths. Some individuals say that eggs, liver and prawns are high in LDL, but the British Heart Foundation says that humans cannot access cholesterol from these foodstuffs, so they are safe to eat and others say that coconut is high in LDL too.
It is hard to find agreement on coconut, but it seems that it raises LDL and HDL, but HDL by a little bit more than it raises LDL. So, not good for you if you have high levels of cholesterol, but good if you have low levels.
Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several topics, but is now concerned with lowering cholesterol without medication. If you want to know more, please visit our site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?
categories: cholesterol,diet,food,cooking,recipes,health,fitness,exercise,nutrition,supplements,weight loss,other,uncategorized,diabetes
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