Is your diet the reason for high blood cholesterol?
Cholesterol is a “sticky” substance which is necessary for many processes in the body, but can also be dangerous if there is too much in the blood. Cholesterol is produced by the fat that we eat, and we enter it through the food.
The problem occurs when cholesterol begins to accumulate on the walls of our blood vessels. This leads to narrowing of the vessel which can lead to heart attacks.
Cholesterol is divided into HDL (good) and LDL (bad). LDL sticks to the walls of blood vessels, and HDL collects the LDL cholesterol and carries it back to the liver.
The causes of high cholesterol levels in the blood:
- Improper diet with too much fat (main cause)
- Family tendency
- Overweight
- Stress
- Smoking
- Thyroid Problems
How to lower your cholesterol?
- From all of the information about nutrition, cholesterol is perhaps the least understood. Part of the confusion comes from the fact that the cholesterol in food is not necessarily the same thing as the cholesterol in our blood. Cholesterol in foods can affect the cholesterol levels, but not necessarily. Studies show that only a third of people are particularly vulnerable to the cholesterol from food, while others can enter it in large quantities, and that will not affect their blood cholesterol. Our liver can produce cholesterol, but in many people the production is reduced once they enter a lot of cholesterol from the food. Therefore, the reduction of cholesterol is not just about avoiding foods that have cholesterol.
- Another thing that’s important to learn is that saturated fats and trans fats have twice as large impact on blood cholesterol than the cholesterol from food. Therefore, the reduction of these fats in the diet should be your main weapon in the fight against blood cholesterol.
The part of fat in the total calories that you enter should not be higher than 30%. It is about 66 grams of fat for an average adult. To get an idea how much it is, a hamburger with 100 grams of meat has about 21 grams of fat.
Of course, if you have high cholesterol you should keep an eye on the cholesterol in food. It is found the most in animal entrails, eggs and shellfish (molluscs). These foods should be limited in your diet, although they do not have the same affect on all people.
- The third thing that is useful to know is that vegetables and fruits have generally no cholesterol. Your diet should be oriented in plant foods not only because they have no cholesterol, but also because they contain substances that lower LDL (bad) cholesterol in the blood. These substances are called sterols and stanols. Fruits and vegetables contain fiber which also has a positive effect on cholesterol.
One plant food which is specifically effective in lowering the cholesterol is flax seed. It is proven that these seeds lower the cholesterol by 10%. You can put milled flax seeds in yogurt or add it in flour when you are making various pastries.
Briefly:
- Reduce the saturated fat in the diet (less margarine, butter, hard cheese and fatty meat)
- Eat fewer foods that have cholesterol (organ meats, shellfish and eggs, although this does not badly affect all people)
- Eat more vegetables and fruits because they do not contain cholesterol
- Lose a few pounds
- Use ground flax seeds in a variety of dishes
The most common recommendation is to eat “no more than 2 to 6″ eggs a week to avoid problems with cholesterol, but even here things are not completely simple. Some people can eat up to 7 eggs a day without adverse impact on the cholesterol.
Eggs can also raise HDL (good) cholesterol, which collects the bad cholesterol from the blood and carries it back to the liver.
So it makes no sense to demonize one of the healthiest foods in the world because things can not be reduced to a simple “yes or no”.
It would be much more effective if you try to lower your cholesterol levels with reducing the saturated fat in the diet and switching to unsaturated (for example olive oil).
In the end, it is important to note that adults should test their cholesterol levels at least once a year or once in two years.
The reason for this is that you never know the condition of your blood vessels because the symptoms for heart disease usually manifests late.
