Diet and High Cholesterol: What You Need To Know
by >> Todd Peterson
You must maintain a healthy cholesterol level in order to avoid heart disease. Increased cholesterol levels which are unhealthy are caused by many things. On its own, being overweight can not explain away heart disease but it can cause an increase in a person's cholesterol levels. Lowering your bad cholesterol and increasing your good cholesterol can be done by losing weight. Plus, things like exercise, age, and gender also play an important part in whether you are at risk for having high cholesterol. How much cholesterol your body will make is sometimes determined by genetics and there is nothing you can do about the genes you received from your Mom and Dad. Certain diets can also lower your cholesterol level.
The best way to improve your cholesterol is to stick to a low-cholesterol diet. Cut back ten to twenty percent of the bad cholesterol that is in your diet, this will greatly improve the health of your heart. Include foods that are rich in healthy fats like vegetable oils and fish. When preparing your meals try to avoid foods that are high in saturated and trans fats. This will help in keeping bad cholesterol at a healthy level. One easy way to change your diet to a low-cholesterol diet is to replace the butter, trans fat margarines and polyunsaturated oils that you might typically use with canola oil, olive oil, or plant sterol spreads. Using white wine vinegar to keep your pan moist while cooking instead of butter will get you off to a good start in preparing healthier meals. You get the best of both worlds. It does not change the taste of the food and it is low in cholesterol. Using a cholesterol-free egg substitute instead of whole eggs is also another option you should consider.
In order to improve your overall health, it is not enough to change your diet but you need to change it the right way. When some people want to lose weight they change their diets but they go about it the wrong way. null Cholesterol is so important to the human body that your body has a backup plan in case you were to be in a situation where you were starving like if you were to experience a famine. What will begin to happen is that your liver will start to produce cholesterol to maintain a certain level of it. An adverse domino effect is set off when eating a low-fat, high-carb diet.
High levels of insulin are dumped into the bloodstream. This triggers the body to siphon off excess blood sugar into the liver to make cholesterol and triglycerides. Although it is important to continue to eat foods that contain good cholesterol but staying away from it altogether can have negative consequences. 75% of the cholesterol that your body needs is made by the liver. The rest of the cholesterol you need comes from the things that you eat. If you decrease the amount of cholesterol that you are eating too much and make up those calories in carbs and sugar, your metabolism goes into famine mode and your liver overproduces cholesterol to make up the difference and stock up. The only way to stop the liver from doing this is to start eating cholesterol again. In conclusion, a low-cholesterol, high-carbohydrate diet can actually lead to high cholesterol!
About The Author:
Todd Peterson has done extensive research on nutrition and heart health for many years. For more information on diets lower cholesterol, Visit his website on maintaining healthy cholesterol, levels the natural and healthy way
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