Lower Your Cholesterol

How To Lower Your cholesterol

October 19th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

How To Lower Your cholesterol - Your Choices

There are many choices when it comes to knowing how to lower your cholesterol levels. These include lifestyle changes such as improvements to your diet and more exercise, medication and natural remedies. Depending upon how high your cholesterol levels are and your specific circumstances you may need to ask your doctor’s opinion on how to lower your cholesterol level most efectively.

Before you make any decisions about treatment, however, you need to know exactly what your cholesterol level is. You can find this out with a home cholesterol test such, if you have a family history of high cholesterol or you are showing symptoms of heart problems you will need to have a blood sample sent to a professional lab. If the results come back at an unhealty level you will need to decide upon how to lower your cholesterol to a normal level and will, most likely, need to be tested at least once a year going forward.

However, even though high cholesterol can lead to atherosclerosis, which in turn can cause heart disease it does not mean that you will end up with heart disease. You can control your cholesterol and can live a long and healthy life by doing so.

Your body produces cholesterol naturally and absorbs additional cholesterol from the foods that you eat. This is why changes in diet are often recommended in order to improve your health. If you are prescribed cholesterol medication your doctor will most likely recommend that you also exercise regularly and eat healthier food alongside taking the drugs.

One way to improve your diet is to cut out white breads and replace them with wheat, rye and other types of whole grain breads. Also eat less red meat and meats generally that are high in satuated fat. It is not a healthy choice to eat food with lots of saturated fats or cooked in grease and oil. Purchase meats that have the fat trimmed or the skinned removed in order to lower cholesterol levels in your body. Oatmeal for breakfast is always a good choice.

When it comes to snacks eat foods that are high in fiber, and low in fat. Try frozen yogurt bars, dry wholegrain cereals, cereal bars, fruit bars and juice bars or skim milk ice cream. Look for popcorn that is light, or unbuttered, rice cakes and low fat pretzels. And, of course, don’t forget to ear plenty of fruit. Some people swear by grapaefruit juice as a good choice in how to lower your cholesterol.

So, when you need to decide how to lower your cholestrol, consider diet, exercise and, if necessary, cholesterol medication.

LDL Cholesterol

September 15th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

A Common Cause of Heart Attacks is High LDL CholesterolLDL cholesterol (or the bad cholesterol) is known to be one of the main causes for heart disease leading to heart attack. This is because LDL cholesterol coats the inside of the arteries with fat narrowing them by building up debris on the inside which causes atherosclerosis. So you’d think that knowing how to lower LDL cholesterol and taking action upon your findings would improve the situation but this is not the case. Even people who have normal levels of LDL cholesterol or just a little high LDL levels can be at risk of developing atherosclerosis and heart attacks.

LDL Cholesterol – The Silent Killer

Knowing how to lower LDL cholesterol is no guarantee that this will prevent atherosclerosis and/or heart attack. There have been many times where the patient in question took the right medication, followed the right diet and exercise regime very seriously and was able to lower and keep their LDL cholesterol at the lowest possible levels. However, the same person still developed progressive atherosclerosis and still experienced mild heart attacks.

This happens even in ideal conditions, i.e. even when the patient does not indulge in unhealthy habits such as smoking, or heavy drinking of alcohol, etc. So, if at all possible it is better not to develop high LDL cholesterol levels in the first place.

Although it looks like knowing how to lowering LDL cholesterol will solve the problem, once the thickening of the arteries sets in this is not enough. It needs something that de-activates the atherosclerosis process to lower the risk of heart attack. This is possible only with the increasing of HDL cholesterol.

HDL cholesterol or good cholesterol is known to remove the debris of fat that has settled on the inside walls of the arteries, thus cleaning the pathway and enabling free flow of blood. The fat and other particles that the HDL cholesterol picks up from the clogged arteries are then sent to the liver which breaks them down and expels them out of the system.

Hence, in order avoid the dangers of heart disease and impeding heart attack it is necessary to avoid the formation of bad cholesterol in the first place. Secondly, it always pays to have increased levels of HLD cholesterol or the good cholesterol because of its ability to clear the arteries of the debris and hence keeping the cardio-vascular system safe and sound.

The studies that have been done till date have clearly indicated that increased LDL cholesterol can be fatally dangerous. The only way to combat the ensuing heart disease is to keep the bad cholesterol levels at the lowest possible in the blood and actively increase the formation of good cholesterol. Knowing how to lower LDL cholesterol levels is a help but it is not sufficient to improve your changes of avoiding heart problems.

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