Lowering cholesterol naturally

Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance that is made in your liver. It is also found in many foods such as dairy, eggs, and meat. A certain amount of cholesterol is vital to your body, but too much, and you are at risk of heart disease and several other health problems. Cholesterol is essential in producing hormones, Vitamin D, and the acids that help digest food. You want to lower the bad cholesterol or LDL because it causes plaque buildup on your arteries’ walls, which will raise your good cholesterol or HDL. HDL is essential in eliminating bad LDL from your blood.

There are two main ways to lower cholesterol. The first way to lower your cholesterol is by changing what you eat. Your diet helps determine the types of food you suggest, and these foods could be rich in trans fat and other substances that will raise your cholesterol substantially. Animal foods such as meat, duck, bacon, and sausage have heavy amounts of cholesterol and saturated fats, raising your cholesterol more than simply eating cholesterol itself. The American Heart Association the authority on heart conditions recommends that people eat less than three hundred milligrams of cholesterol daily. If you have already been diagnosed with heart disease, you should lower the amount of cholesterol you eat daily to less than two hundred milligrams.

Related: Top 10 foods for heart health examined

The other primary way you can lower your cholesterol is by taking drugs prescribed by a doctor specially designed to lower cholesterol. Unfortunately, many people who already have heart disease, diabetes, or a high risk of heart disease have no choice but to take the drugs prescribed to them by the doctor to control their cholesterol levels.

Another important reason for high cholesterol among people these days is smoking and lack of exercise. Smoking can rot away your teeth, cause you to have lung problems, and increase your risk of heart disease and other health complications. In addition, smoking lowers your body’s HDL or good cholesterol levels. The good news is that those changes in cholesterol levels can easily be reversed by quitting smoking. Exercise is crucial to all body functions. Even a semi-moderated exercise regimen can help control your blood pressure levels And your risk of diabetes and heart disease. A good exercise routine will also help you lose weight and make you feel more energized.

Related: Want to quit smoking for good? Just do this ONE thing

If you are concerned about cholesterol levels, you should contact your doctor. A simple blood test will determine the levels of LDL and HDL in your body. The doctor can probably help you with simple changes to your lifestyle to drastically help you control your cholesterol levels. Your level of cholesterol levels is determined from birth, but know that you can make these minor changes in your lifestyle and see improvement in your health very quickly.

To have a healthy body and avoid problems like heart disease, you absolutely must maintain a healthy cholesterol level. Many things can increase your cholesterol to unhealthy levels. For example, being overweight can increase your cholesterol and increase your risk of heart disease. If you can lose weight, you can lower your bad cholesterol and increase your good cholesterol simultaneously. Age, the amount you exercise, and gender can also play a role in whether or not you are at risk for high cholesterol. Many people are probably unaware that your genes also determine how much cholesterol your body produces.

Related: 5 popular heart healthy recipe variations

Stick to a low-cholesterol diet, and you will significantly improve your cholesterol. If you cut the bad cholesterol that you consume by twenty percent or more, you can improve the health of your heart. Include foods rich in healthy fats like oils, vegetables, and fish. A simple way to change your diet to a low cholesterol diet is by replacing the trans fats margarine, butter, and polyunsaturated oils that you might typically use with olive oil or canola oil. White vinegar for keeping your pan moist instead of butter doesn’t change the taste of your food but is very low in cholesterol. Using a cholesterol-free egg substitute instead of whole eggs will also help you maintain a healthy diet.

Rather than avoiding anything that has cholesterol, it is more important to eat foods that contain good cholesterol. Believe it or not, many people are not aware that low-fat, high-carb diets can raise your cholesterol to dangerous levels as well. So to maintain a healthy diet, avoid foods with high-carbs as well. This is because the liver only produces about seventy-five percent of the cholesterol you need. All the rest of the cholesterol comes from what you eat daily.

As I mentioned before, if you make up the calories you lose from lowering your cholesterol with foods containing heavy amounts of carbohydrates and sugar, your metabolism will go into a state of famine. This means that your liver overproduces cholesterol to make up the difference. This state will not stop until you start to eat cholesterol again. So basically, you can raise your cholesterol to high levels by having a low-cholesterol, high-carbohydrate diet, which can also cause problems for your health.

There are two primary nutrients in the foods you eat that raise your LDL or harmful cholesterol levels. The first one is cholesterol, a waxy fat-like substance that comes from the animal products that you eat. Duck, meat, Salami, bacon, cheese, and other products also contain high amounts of cholesterol. The other nutrient that will raise your harmful cholesterol levels is saturated fats, which increase the LDL levels in your body more than anything else in an average diet. Overeating of these two nutrients is the leading cause of high cholesterol.

However, you are in luck because you have found this article, and the good news is there are many delicious foods low in cholesterol that can lower your cholesterol significantly. One such food is fish. Fish contains omega-3 fatty acids that reduce the amount of cholesterol in your body. It is recommended that a person eat two servers of fish a week. You can also take fish oil tablets; these also contain omega-3′s. Even for people that have already had heart attacks, eating fish and fish oil tablets has considerably reduced their risk of sudden death. The high levels of omega-3′s in fish also help lower blood pressure and the risk of developing blood clots.

Another food that is an excellent source of reducing your cholesterol is nuts. Nuts are rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids. A handful a day of hazelnuts, peanuts, pecans, some pine nuts, pistachio nuts, walnuts, and almonds may reduce your risk of heart disease, says the FDA. However, nuts are very high in calories, so only a handful is recommended. An easy way to incorporate nuts into your daily diet is to replace the meat cashews or cheese in your salad with a handful of nuts. Also, please remember that these instructions about nuts only refer to unsalted nuts and those not coated in sugar. Try replacing the foods that are high in saturated fats with nuts.

Related: Top 10 worst processed foods to stay away from

It has been said that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” When dealing with high cholesterol, the same can be said of foods that contain fiber, such as bananas, cooked oatmeal, and oat bran. Eating Soluble fiber reduces cholesterol absorption into your bloodstream, reducing your low-density lipoproteins, the bad cholesterol. You only need to eat about five to ten grams of soluble fiber daily to lower your LDL. Apples, bananas, barley, prunes, and kidney beans contain soluble fiber. Fiber is also a great weight loss ingredient.

Foods that contain fiber are very filling, which helps to limit the amount of unnecessary snacking a person will do every day. It has been said that women should get about 25g of fiber daily, while men should consume at least 38g a day. Whole-grain foods contain about three times the amount of fiber as regular white bread. Blackberries and canned pumpkins contain upwards of 3g of fiber per serving. Most cereal contains some fiber as well. The grains that have the most fiber are raisin bran types.

As you have read today, you don’t have to sacrifice delicious food for healthy food to lower your cholesterol naturally. The foods I have described are delicious, nutritious, and very important in your daily diet. Changing your daily diet just a little bit to incorporate these low-cholesterol foods will make you much healthier and allow you to see drastic changes in your cholesterol within about six weeks.

Cholesterol is something that everyone has in their body. Your liver and other areas of your body produce it. However, it is vital to have the right amount. Otherwise, you could develop heart disease and have a higher risk of diabetes. Small changes in your daily diet could save you from having to take medication to keep your cholesterol levels in check. These changes only require that you change the kinds of foods that you eat every day and get regular exercise.

Fish is one of the best things you can eat when trying to lower your cholesterol levels. The omega-3 fatty acids in fish will help immensely in lowering your cholesterol. Nuts and oatmeal, oat bran, and most cereals will also help lower your cholesterol. Only have a small amount of nuts per day, though, and make sure they are unsalted and not covered in sugar. Otherwise, you will just be compounding your problems. Oatmeal, oat bran, cereal, apples, bananas, and other fruits and vegetables are high in soluble fiber, which will help lower your overall cholesterol levels.

Avoid products that contain a large amount of trans fat and saturated fats. Trans fat foods are terrible for your body when you are trying to lower your cholesterol levels because the high amounts of trans fat raise your LDL or bad cholesterol while lowering the HDL or good cholesterol levels in your body. I mentioned low-cholesterol medications above because if your cholesterol levels get too high, you will have no choice but to take these medications to control your skyrocketing cholesterol levels.

The good news is that you can avoid taking these medications if you can make these simple changes in your daily habits. Many benefits are afforded to you for not taking cholesterol-lowering drugs. First of all, it is much cheaper to buy healthy foods rather than expensive cholesterol-lowering medications. Another huge benefit is that you won’t have to deal with the side effects that many people can’t deal with, which are shared with cholesterol-lowering medications. I think the most significant benefit of all is the satisfaction of having lowered your cholesterol naturally and all by yourself, without the need for expensive medicines or operations due to a heart attack or stroke.

Practice these steps in moderation, and make sure to eat a variety of different foods every day. Take care of yourself and exercise regularly. Exercise is another excellent tool for lowering your cholesterol and weight at the same time. People who are overweight are at higher risk of heart disease and diabetes, and other health problems. Excess weight increases your body’s bad cholesterol or LDL, thus raising your cholesterol levels. Getting about thirty minutes of exercise should do wonders for your cholesterol levels because losing weight helps lower triglycerides and increases your body’s HDL or good cholesterol levels. If you have diabetes, poor control could also raise cholesterol levels.

Stress plagues all of us every once in a while. Some people have vast amounts of stress. Stress is not suitable for your body; it raises your blood pressure, can cause you to get shingles, and cause other health problems as well. One of the reasons it is essential to relieving yourself of stress is that it controls your habits. For example, some people under a large amount of stress will indulge in very fatty food to cope with the stress. Many other individuals console themselves with other unhealthy things when under heavy pressure. These habits can have drastic impacts on their cholesterol levels and their health.

So eat healthily, avoid foods with large amounts of fat, exercise regularly, and control your stress levels, and you should be on your way to a new healthy low cholesterol you.