Food To Consume To Lower Cholesterol Optimal Health

Food To Consume To Lower Cholesterol. “We are what we eat”. How true this saying is! The food we eat determines the cholesterol levels of our body. High cholesterol levels can cause heart diseases and high blood pressure as age progress which can lead to paralysis or death in the patient.

Unless several important changes are made in the diet, high cholesterol levels can steal entire lives.

These days, almost all of the most popular foods stuffs contain large quantities of LDC known more popularly as bad cholesterol. By substituting these with HDL widely known as “good cholesterol” we can have a much healthier life. Given below are some of the best ways to do this.

Breakfast is the most important part of the day’s meal.

Bread should be avoided and it should be replaced by oatmeal.
Doing this ensures that in just two weeks the cholesterol levels in the body will be reduced by almost 20%.
Making this a habit will greatly reduce the cholesterol levels of the body.
If the breakfast cannot contain oatmeal, fruits such as apples should be had.

Having two apples or twelve ounces of good apple juice in a day can lower the chance of various diseases of the heart by almost 50%.

Apples are easy to get in all supermarkets and can be had whenever possible irrespective of the time of the day.
It can be had as a dessert or a snack or even after having a light meal.
Making vegetables a part of lunch and dinner is the most effective way to ensure a healthy diet.
Also, red meat should be replaced with fish or poultry.
These foodstuffs are healthier as they do not contain saturated fats.

People who love cooking can add ingredients such as garlic to their food.

Garlic has the property of declogging arteries thereby reducing the chances of getting heart diseases.
Beans and pork are good for health.
A can of either can greatly reduce the risk of bad cholesterol as they contain fibers that are soluble and can help in fighting bad cholesterol.
Onions are not all that popular among people but having just half an onion per day greatly reduces LDC and increases HDC in the body.

There is a popular misconception that all fats are bad for health.

This is not entirely correct.
There are different kinds of fats.
Some are bad for the health while others like omega 3 fatty acids and unsaturated fats are considered to be healthy.

How the food is prepared greatly affects the cholesterol levels of the body.

Cooking oils contain monosaturated and polyunsaturated fats which are highly effective in lowering cholesterol levels in the body.
Hence food should be cooked using these oils.
While shopping, the ingredients of the item should be properly read from the label to ensure that it is healthy.
People who are overweight and flabby are the ones that are most likely to suffer from various diseases caused by high levels of bad cholesterol.
If making a personalized dietary plan is difficult for an individual, then a proper dietitian should be consulted who can work out a diet plan that should be followed religiously by the individual.

Food For People With High Cholesterol

Bad cholesterol sticks to the body and refuses to let go.
Efforts by the afflicted ones to lower cholesterol levels can prove futile and can be very frustrating.
If only water could flush out all the bad cholesterol from the body!
Then it would not be such a big cause of worry as it is today.

Bad cholesterol clogs the veins.

Even though they have a tiny diameter, this can cause a hindrance to the smooth flow of blood which can even be fatal.
It is a common misconception that all cholesterol is bad for health.
Good cholesterol is important for all the vital processes of the human body.
Bad cholesterol is the one that clogs arteries.
However, it takes many years of unchecked dietary habits that gradually lead up to these levels of cholesterol that can be fatal.
Cholesterol usually affects obese or overweight people.

The factors that adversely affect this are drugs, bad diets, and hereditary traits.

As a result, cholesterol in people with normal weights is comparatively rarer, but not unheard of.
There is not much information available about the prevention of cholesterol these days.
Most of the available information only talks about the reduction of cholesterol levels after a person has been diagnosed clinically.
Therefore personal diagnosis cannot ensure a safer future when concerned with cholesterol.

Maintaining a healthier lifestyle is the most effective method in preventing various health disorders, to begin with.

Although this is talked about all the time, carefully watching over your food consumption is the most practical way of preventing bad health.
And one of the many ways to do this-avoid fat.
On the other hand, various food groups help in lowering cholesterol levels.
Such foodstuffs contain antioxidants that help in preventing an increase in bad cholesterol levels in the body.

These include:

FIBERS including OATMEAL-

This is a fiber of high nutritional content with the capability of reducing cholesterol.
Many studies were conducted on this in the 1980s right up until 1989.
However, it lost its popularity temporarily till 1997 when it was revived again by the Food and Drug Administration after it was declared that combined with a good diet that is low in fat, it can prevent various heart diseases.
Other fibrous foods include legumes, rice, brewer’s yeast, bran, wheat, bread, beans, and various other cereals that help in increasing the levels of good cholesterol in the body.

FRUITS and VEGETABLES-

These are full of vitamins and antioxidants and are found at the top of the food pyramid.
We must eat lots of this natural food that processed food.
They cleanse the body and are healthy as they do not contain any fats.
Citrus fruits that contain vitamin C should be particularly favored.
The best medicine to combat free-radical elements that cause various diseases is cucumber as it is rich in the antioxidant vitamin E.

FISH-

Fishes with white meat and tuna are also a part of healthy diets as fishes contain lesser amounts of unsaturated fats.

LEAN MEATS-

extra lean beef, liver, turkey, and chicken without their skin are all fat-free and are rich in proteins.
Therefore they are an integral part of healthy diets.

YOGURT-

It helps in the digestion of food by regulating stomach acids.
Hence it helps in the reduction of cholesterol levels and is also low in fat.

The Deadliest Excess Substance That Could Form In The Body

The sustenance of outer membrane cells in every vertebrate requires cholesterol.
It helps in blood circulation to the tissues of the body and blood plasma carried as alcohol and fatty lipids (steroids).
Proper maintenance of cholesterol levels is necessary for the unhindered flow of blood and plasma.
The required levels of cholesterol should be maintained and should not be exceeded.
Nowadays fast foods and highway eateries are taking over the food market.
Hence there needs to be awareness of intake of additional or unwanted cholesterol that can affect the health of the present generation adversely.

First of all proper, awareness of the working of cholesterol and its effects on the metabolic process of the human body is necessary before knowing how to eliminate it.

“Bad cholesterol” refers to low-density lipoproteins.
Lipoproteins are the carrier molecules.
LDL can deposit cholesterol on the artery walls increasing its thickness and thus obstructing the normal passage of blood.
This causes atherosclerosis.

On the other hand, high-density lipoproteins are the “good cholesterols”.

The various functions of good cholesterol include manufacturing of bile, anti-oxidants, digestion of fats that are essential for the function of vitamins like vitamin A, D, E, and K which are fat-soluble.
These vitamins help in various metabolic processes of the reproductive organs starting from puberty onwards right up until old age that depending on estrogen levels in the body.

The good cholesterol in our body comes from two sources:

1. Almost 75% that is three-fourths of the required good cholesterol is produced in the body itself in the tissues of various organs like the liver, reproductive organs central nervous system including the spinal cord and the brain, atheroma, and adrenal gland.

Any degenerative change in the atheroma can cause the development of coronary artery disease and atherosclerotic plaques that can cause a hindrance to the flow of blood.
This sudden clogging of the arteries can affect the flow of blood to and from the heart resulting in heart attacks that can even be fatal.

2. The rest of the cholesterol that is 25% comes from external sources.

Hence one must be aware of what they eat and maintain a proper diet.
Animal meat, dairy products, and egg yolk contain large amounts of cholesterol.
The amount of this cholesterol intake must be carefully monitored as even a small excess in this can cause an imbalance of cholesterol levels in the body.

The cholesterol more than the required 25%, that is, the idle cholesterol can be lowered by:

Using non-saturated cooking oils can reduce the intake of fats.
The healthiest oil containing non-saturated fats is olive oil which is palm oil.
Others such as coconut oil contain highly saturated fats.
Eating fruits and vegetables with high fiber content, taking low sodium content foods and complex carbohydrates can greatly reduce cholesterol levels of the body.
Soybeans, nuts, corn, wheat, legumes, and staple cereals are some of the best cholesterol-reducing foodstuffs.

Eating in restaurants and fast food joints should be avoided as they contain high sodium content foods and saturated fats.

Alcohol can also cause an increase in cholesterol levels and should be avoided.

Omega-3 acids found in mackerel, Salmon, some species of tuna, and deep-sea fishes help in decreasing levels of idle cholesterol in the body.

Medicines including reductase inhibitors such as HMG-COA, atorvastatin (Lipitor), and lovastatin (Mevacor) which are statins can be taken to effectively reduce LDL but only with the guidance of a physician.

Foods To Avoid To Lower Cholesterol

People just love to eat. Any free time they get they don’t miss out on catching up on a meal.
The meal specified here is not one of the three basic meals one has during the day, but it is one of the intermeal cravings one indulges in.
In other words snack breaks.

Never do individuals pay attention to what exactly is the cholesterol content in the food they are consuming.

Their ultimate pleasure lies only in the taste.
These snacks oft picked up from fast food centers are extremely unhealthy and have high cholesterol content which has even encouraged Mcdonald’s to mention the calorie content in every product.
The alarming growth in the number of obese and overweight people is something to watch out for is what the doctors have realized.
The obvious implications of these are the number of people who would be prone to heart diseases and heart attacks would increase in the USA.

Many suggestions have been made to try to curb this growing syndrome.

It includes visiting the doctor annually and making changes to one’s daily habits and lifestyle.
The only way to reduce cholesterol intake is to be conscious about your diet.
This is the only way you could reduce the amount of it going into your system.
If you are wondering what kind of food is that which is very high in cholesterol content?
What kind of food is it that you must avoid?

Here it goes.

First and foremost if you are a voracious red meat eater, you must cut down upon the amount of red meat you consume like steak, bacon, and ham.
They are extremely high in fat content.
Foregoing it at one instant will be hard for an individual, hence the age-old technique of divide and conquer must be adopted.
One can start by gradually decreasing the amount of such food content.
The oil and constituent ingredients used to cook fried foods like burgers and French fries are a storehouse of cholesterol and fat.

This list also includes prepackaged frozen meals.

Diary and Poultry products like eggs, milk, and chicken should be minimized in one’s diet.
To ensure that the body gets a sufficient amount of calcium one can instead include milk (non-fat) and yogurt in the diet.
As kids one is not as much a threat as an adult is with a high intake of junk food.

Eventually as one grows older the dietary necessities must be taken into consideration.

Above we have mentioned the food items one must avoid.
Apart from fat and cholesterol, these food items may consider other vital elements essential for a diet.
Hence we shall look into substitutes for these food items.

Products such as fruits, soy, whole wheat grain, and vegetables must be taken aplenty.

These products have omega 3 acids which reduce the cholesterol content in the human body apart from the essential vitamins and minerals required.
One must adopt the motto of eating less and living long and make sure the diet one consumes must be within the limit of thirty percent of cholesterol.
One can always visit a dietician for further guidance who will set up a daily dietary pattern with variations.