Posts Tagged ‘cholesterol’

What To Eat To Reduce Your Cholesterol Levels

The Western world is under attack from a disease of our own making! Health officials in each Western country are ringing the warning bells about general public levels of obesity, high blood pressure and cholesterol. The main culprits of this are said to be over eating, eating junk food and not exercising enough.

At one time, not so long ago, the majority of the sufferers of these issues were middle-aged Americans. That extended to middle-aged Europeans. Then to American children and now it is spreading to European children. None of the warnings concerning eating too much junk food and not exercising enough seem to be having any effect at all.

All of these three issues are related and that is why heart disease is the primary killer of adults in the West. Cholesterol plays a big part in these conditions. However, not all cholesterol is bad. LDL cholesterol is often known as the ‘bad cholesterol’ and HDL is known as the ‘good cholesterol’, because it helps mop up LDL.

Small amounts of cholesterol are also necessary for the production of vitamin D and bile salts and it is also functional in the balancing of hormones particularly in women. However, LDL cholesterol sometimes clings to the walls of the arteries and if it is permitted to build up too much, can block them.

If the arteries become clogged, the heart will have to pump more to get enough blood to where it is required and this can lead to the first stages of high blood pressure.

The best manner to be rid of excess LDL is to have high levels of HDL, because HDL encapsulates LDL and takes it back to the liver where it is treated and excreted. HDL cholesterol can be consumed by eating nuts, fish, fresh fruit and vegetables, soya and remarkable spreads that were designed to lower LDL.

However, the best way of reducing LDL is by not eating it in the first place. LDL is most prevalent in saturated fats and hydrogenated trans fats. Saturated fats are usually in red meat and full-fat dairy products like milk, cream, butter and cheese. Trans fats are mostly in junk foodstuffs like potato crisps, potato chips, pies, pasties, hamburgers and hot dogs. Cut these out and that is half the battle for a great deal of individuals.

Replace the red meat in your diet with soya products like tofu, of which 25% grammes a day is said to be able to reduce bad cholesterol by 15-30%. Walnuts and almonds have a similar reputation as do olive oil and rolled oats.

In fact, all grains, pulses and beans are good in the fight against LDL. In general, the foods that will help you are those that contain plenty of fibre and roughage; fresh is better than tinned (which will contain a preservative such as salt); and white meat or fish is better than red meat like beef and pork.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on numerous topics, but is now concerned with low cholesterol diet recipes. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?

Does The Atkins Grapefruit Diet Exist?

The Atkins Grapefruit diet is a diet plan, not endorsed by the estate of Dr. Atkins, that plays on the popularity of the grapefruit diet and the Atkins diet name. A closer look into this diet shows that it may not be all it claims to be.

Firstly, it’s pretty difficult to find information on the Atkins grapefruit diet plan. Smart people know that when someone is perpetrating a deception, or a con, they will usually gloss over facts. This is what the Atkins grapefruit diet seems to do in an attempt to persuade people to associate it with two supposedly effective diets.

Is the Atkins Grapefruit Diet part of the Atkins Diet or supported by the firm of the late Dr. Atkins? The answer is no, not only is there no mention of the Atkins Grapefruit Diet on the Atkins web site, but there is no fruit of any kind mentioned in the list of allowed foods in the Atkins diet Induction phase.

The induction phase recommends the following foods:

Fish of all types. All fowl such as turkey and chicken. All shellfish. All meat such as beef or pork. Eggs cooked in all styles, including fried. Cheese. Vegetables. Herbs and Spices. Fats and Oils. Low carbohydrate beverages, including diet soft drinks.

Do you notice something? No fruit is mentioned on that list. Later phases of the Atkins diet do include small amounts of fruits such as cantaloupe, strawberries and even lemon juice, and the pre-maintenance and maintenance phases even specifically allow small amounts of grapefruit. But when compared to the amount of Grapefruit recommended on the Atkins Grapefruit Diet, again there is a discrepancy.

The Atkins Grapefruit Diet recommends a cup of grapefruit juice or a cup of grapefruit sections, with 8 and 18 carbs respectively. Even the most generous stages of the Atkins diet recommends restricting grapefruit intake to less than 8 carbs per day. That’s a direct contradiction of one diet with the other

Most reasonable people would inspect the Atkins website the moment they heard of the Atkins Grapefruit Diet. When they found no mention of that diet on the site, a red light would go off and an alarm bell would sound.

In general, you should remember this: any diet that recommend too heavily on one food, such as grapefruit on a grapefruit diet, is not healthy for all but very short periods. The Atkins Grapefruit Diet is not associated with the Atkins diet, and may interfere with the results of the Atkins diet in its early phases.

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The Carb Count of Dr Atkins’ Diet Plans

Most people on diets count the number of calories that are present in their meal. The low carb diet is very different from these diets because rather than counting calories you have to count your carbohydrate intake. There are now many methods by which you can make a carbohydrate count.

In all of these diets the main thing to remember is that there is a calorific difference between raw and cooked food. With raw foods, you only have to measure the full weight of the food and you can see what the actual carbohydrate count is. However, the cooked version can have various seasoning and other ingredients added, which can change the carbohydrate count of these foods quite dramatically.

In order that you don’t get your foods mixed up you might want to see about obtaining one of those carb counters that are being advertised on the many low carb diet pages on the Internet. Armed with something like this you can very easily look up the carbohydrate count of whatever kinds of food that you like to eat.

There are even carb counters that can discover and calculate the hidden carbs in your favourite foods and whatever the carb content of these foods is, will be displayed. You will then be able to see whether they fit in with the low carb diet you are on. You could also see about obtaining a list of foods where the carbohydrate count for those foods is clearly given.

In this way, when you plan your meals, you will just need to check your list to find out which low carb foods are acceptable. Sometimes, the Internet low carb recipe websites will have the information about the carbohydrate count that is in their recipe’s contents. Of course, if this information is not available you will have to fall back on counting carbohydrates yourself to get this vital information.

You should not worry too much about looking up what the carbohydrate count is of everything in the recipe. Sometimes, you can be a little too dogmatic and end up leaving vital ingredients out of your meals because your carbohydrate count for that meal or the day has been exceeded.

Basically, with a carbohydrate count you can decide whether or not to use certain foods in your meals. However, there is a good side to this carbohydrate counting and there is a negative side. Perhaps the main thing that you need to do is to figure out what foods you consider to be part of a healthy diet and use the carbohydrate count just to find the nutritional value of your meals.

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What Is The The Atkins Diet?

The popular name for the ‘Atkins Nutritional Approach’ is the ‘Atkins Diet’, which was the invention of Doctor Robert Atkins. Dr. Atkins had gained a lot of surplus weight while he was studying in medical school and after coming across a new diet in a medical journal, he decided to improve on it and publish it as his own.

Atkins, in his Atkins Diet, stated that he believed that the prevalent theories about weight gain were all wrong. First, he dismissed the idea that saturated fats were bad; instead he said it was it was carbohydrates that led to the weight problems Americans have. Atkins held that our obsession with fat actually worsened the problem. He pointed to all the low-fat foods that were high in carbohydrates, which meant that people on a diet often ate foods that were worse for them than what they normally ate.

The Atkins diet moved the focus. Atkins said that by cutting out carbohydrates, people would burn stored body fats. And if you lose the fat, you lose the weight. He said it was not just a matter of eating less. Dr. Atkins held that your diet could actually help you burn calories. The Atkins diet supposedly burned more calories than were consumed everyday. But the claims were contested.

Dr. Atkins also promulgated the positive influence that his diet should have on people with Type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a disease you usually get early in life, but Type 2 is more often closely associated with diet and excess body weight. Therefore, it should follow that any diet that helps reduce weight, will help people with Type 2 diabetes. The Atkins diet is low in carbohydrates, which must be avoided by those with Type 2 diabetes regardless of the caloric intake, which the Atkins diet does, so Atkins claimed that those who suffer Type 2 diabetes would no longer need medication such as insulin. Doctors do not agree with Atkins on this point, although they do agree, that a lower carbohydrate intake helps control Type 2 diabetes, but there is no proof that carbohydrates cause diabetes.

What are the steps one has to take to follow the Atkins diet? It is followed in four phases – Induction; On-Going Weight loss, Pre-maintenance and Lifetime Maintenance. Here is an overview of the most important phase – The Induction Phase.

The Induction phase is the most difficult phase of the Atkins diet. Atkins is flexible about the time period ” but recommends it lasts for two weeks. During this phase carbohydrates are severely limited ” you can only consume up to 20 grams per day. The goal is to enter a fat burning metabolic phase called ketosis when the body, starved of glucose, will begin converting stored fat into fatty acids needed to power the body. Weight loss during this phase can be extreme ” some Atkins followers reported losses of 5-10 pounds a week or more.

The purposes of the three final phases in the Atkins diet are the learning of the ideal carbohydrate levels for the next two phases: continued weight loss and weight maintenance. Millions of people are still losing the weight they want to on this diet ” but beware the dangers of taking in too much cholesterol.

Do you need to lose that excess weight rapidly? Well, take a free look at The Atkins Diet, by going to our website called The Atkins Diet Plan

A Link Between High Cholesterol Levels And Diabetes

Diabetes is a chronic disease which can have numerous side effects. The condition (usually) comes about as a result of the pancreas not producing enough insulin, which you require to handle the sugar level in your blood. Having diabetes, or too much sugar in your blood can have dire consequences such as cataracts (treatable blindness), bad teeth and an elevated danger of general infections.

However what lots of individuals do not comprehend is that there is a connection between high cholesterol levels and diabetes. This link is known as macular edema and it affects eyesight. If you have diabetes and high cholesterol levels, you should be paying meticulous attention to your diet in order to avoid macular edema

Macular edema is frequently a painful, non-reversible kind of blindness.

In case you are uncertain about cholesterol, it would be best if we talk about this topic in order to clarify. Individuals talk of ‘cholesterol levels’ because there are three measurements that are important. HDL cholesterol is frequently called ‘good cholesterol’ and LDL cholesterol is known as bad cholesterol.

It is vital to have LDL because it helps in the production of bile and vitamin D and it helps regulate hormones, but too much of it can block arteries and cause heart issues. HDL is ‘good’ because it soaks up LDL and takes it back to the liver where it is got rid of.

Those are the two main levels. You would be forgiven for thinking that it is best to have as much HDL as possible, and this is a fact, to a large extent, because you do need LDL as well, but the combined of both of these levels is also important. You should not have a high level of both combined either.

The additional reason why these levels are more relevant to diabetics is because diabetics with a high level of LDL run approximately three times more risk of developing macular edema than non-diabetics. Therefore the danger of high cholesterol for diabetics is imperative.

This is such a significant problem that diabetics are warned to check the levels of their cholesterol very frequently. The good news is that diabetics will already be following a diet and the decreased cholesterol diet is fairly comparable and is easy to integrate into your current regime.

The foods that you ought to avoid to reduce your level of LDL cholesterol include saturated fats such as are found in red meat and dairy products like full-fat milk, butter, cream and cheese. It is also present in trans and hydrogenated fats, which are present in junk foods and cheap margarine.

The foodstuffs to eat in order to increase your level of LDL are in essence mono- and poly-unsaturated fats, vegetarian foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, soya products, fish, nuts and grains, particularly whole grains. Roughage and fibre are what you should be searching for. Fish and olive oil are also good in the battle against LDL cholesterol.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on numerous topics, but is now concerned with lowering cholesterol without medication. If you want to know more, please visit our site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?

High Cholesterol And Self Testing Monitors

Heart disease is the principal killer in most countries in the Western world and it is becoming more widespread in the Third World as well as American-style junk food becomes more popular there as well. One aspect of heart disease is high blood pressure and another is a high level of LDL, or ‘bad’, cholesterol and triglycerides.

Because of this, lots of doctors reckon that all individuals more than the age of eighteen should have their cholesterol levels checked at least once a year, particularly if you know that your diet is pretty suspect or if you have genetic worries which mean that you will have high cholesterol.

Once you know that you have a difficulty, then you ought to definitely have a check up every year and take some steps to reduce your consumption of foods that increase your cholesterol levels. Foods that fall into this category are those that contain saturated fats or hydrogenated, trans fats.

This basically means cutting out these fats. Saturated fats are predominant in red meats and full-fat dairy products like milk, butter, cheese, cream, and beef and pork. Hydrogenated trans fats are common in commercial junk food like hamburgers, hot dogs, potato crisps, potato chips, pies and pasties.

If you have high levels of blood fats like HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides you have to do something and that means that you have two alternatives: which means that you have to either initiate lifestyle changes or take tablets for the remainder of your life.

If you want to try fixing the difficulty yourself without tablets but with your medical doctor’s help, you will have to have frequent check ups to keep an eye on your progress or you could get a home cholesterol monitor. If you take this route, you will need to understand the monitor’s readings.

There are usually three or four important readings: LDL, HDL, Total Cholesterol and Triglycerides. HDL (or ‘good cholesterol’ ought to be| 40 or more; LDL (or ‘bad cholesterol’) ought to be less than 100-130. However, most home testing kits will only give the total cholesterol level, which ought to be below 200.

This total cholesterol reading is not completely satisfactory because you will not know the individual cholesterol levels. After all, under 200 can still be very, very bad. Even very perilous. However, if you take a physician’s test each quarter and you test at home until you acquire a feel for the effect that the measures you are taking are having, you ought to bel safe between tests.

However, these home test cholesterol monitors are becoming more and more advanced every year, so it is worth going to a substantial national chemists and seeing what is on sale from time to time. Anyway, if going to the physician is a problem or too costly, this might be your only option.

The reality is that home test kits are not very helpful yet, but they are better than nothing if used in conjunction with sceduled visits to the doctor, but on their own they do not give the entire picture and their results cannot be relied upon as an indication that your cholesterol levels are ok.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several subjects, but is now concerned with low fat low cholesterol diet. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?

Foodstuffs You Ought To Avoid To Reduce Cholesterol

Cholesterol is a huge problem in Western countries and the problem is spreading from older people to younger people and from Westerners to Easterners. Health authorities all over the world are warning of the heart disease time bomb that is ticking away. That is all well and good, but the problem is is that not a lot of people are listening until it is rather late.

One of the biggest concerns is that people do not think before buying a meal or a snack – if they are hungry, they will merely buy a hamburger or a pie. Another big difficulty, is that the generation born in the Seventies did not learn how to cook, but instead depended on junk food. They have also passed that on to their children and so it goes on.

This state of affairs has led to the rise in heart disease. So, what can be done about it? Well, the best thing would be for individuals to go back forty or fifty years and begin again, but since that is not possible, it is useful to look into that earlier lifestyle and see how we differ nowadays from it.

Forty or fifty years ago, there were junk foodstuffs, but most people ate them only very occasionally. They went home to a cooked meal concocted either by their mother or their wife or they cooked it themselves. It is not important who cooked it, the fact that it was cooked at home is the significant bit.

How often do you eat take-aways and how frequently do you eat home cooked meals – meals that were prepared from fresh, raw ingredients?

There were fewer labour-saving devices in those days, so people worked harder. ‘Harder” I said, people probably work longer hours now, but they do not expend so much calories. In those days, people walked further and worked more strenuously and consumed meals made from raw ingredients.

We do not do that now and those are the main reasons why we are all struggling with heart disease. OK, you have to be pretty far gone for it to become too late. You can implement lifestyle changes now and you will recover or you can take tablets and help to make the pharmaceuticals even richer.

If you would like to do something about your circumstance, it is fairly simple. The first thing to do is avoid red meat, full-fat dairy produce like milk, cream, butter and cheese and stop eating junk food, such as hamburgers, store-bought pizzas, hot dogs, pies, pasties, crisps and chips entirely. This will vastly reduce most people’s sources of the prime culprits of high cholesterol – namely, saturated fats and hydrogenated,or trans, fats..

The second thing to do is increase your consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables. You should also eat more peas, beans, lentils, grains and nuts. Soya is also very (very) good for you.

Avoid eating animal skin of all kinds, because a lot of the fat content is in the skin and try to replace red meat dishes with those made using fish, chicken and tofu.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on numerous topics, but is now concerned with low cholesterol diet recipes. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?

What You Can Do To Lower Your Cholesterol

There is lots of evidence that all adults ought to keep one eye on their cholesterol levels. In early life, the body can deal with a bit of abuse, yet as we get older our bodies become less able to handle the rubbish we feed it. Furthermore, younger individuals are normally more lively than older people and exercise is a means of lowering cholesterol.

It is worth having your cholesterol levels tested at various stages of your life, because some people have genetic problems that result in too much cholesterol and it is worth knowing if you fall into this group as early as possible.

Before you begin working on your cholesterol you ought to know what they are. So, get your numbers and ask your doctor for an opinion. He or she might say that they are all right, that they are on the high side or that you had better do something about them immediately. Make certain that you make a note of these numbers which will be for your HDL (good cholesterol) and LDL (bad cholesterol) levels.

Once you have these reference points and your GP’s opinion you can choose what action to take. In this article, we will talk about the three most effective methods of decreasing your LDL level of cholesterol.

1] The most effective thing you can do to lower your LDL cholesterol is to reduce the amount of saturated fat and trans fat that you eat. People get most of their bad cholesterol from these two fats by a long chalk. Saturated fat comes from animal fat but particularly from red meat and full fat dairy products like milk, cream and cheese. Trans fats are hydrogenated fats, which are vegetable fats which have been ‘liquidized’ with water.

Merely cutting out these two types of fat might be sufficient to save you from taking medication for the rest of your life. However, every body needs fat, so besides cutting these harmful fats out, you will have to replace some of them with mono-unsaturated fats and poly-unsaturated fats. These names are listed on products in a great deal of countries.

In essence, it means cooking with olive oil and spreading better margarine on your bread. In fact there are even margarines and salad dressings now that really lower cholesterol in their own right.

2] The second means to keep your cholesterol levels under control is exercise. Exercise burns up your LDL cholesterol. You do not have to do a great deal to create a big difference. Hiking thirty minutes every morning and every evening can have quite a remarkable impact on your health particularly if you do not exercise at all at the moment.

3] The third most effective method of keeping your cholesterol levels correct is to maintain a good body weight. As you can see, by following a sensible diet and doing regular exercise, you will of necessity get your correct body weight. The whole system is actually telling you that if you have a problem with cholesterol, then you are not living correctly.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several subjects, but is now concerned with low fat low cholesterol diet. If you want to know more, please visit our site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?

Following A Decent Diet Can Lower Cholesterol

If you have just been told that your cholesterol levels are out, you will probably be weighing up the alternatives that your doctor gave you. One option would be to take tablets and the other option would be to adjust your diet and take more exercise. The changes in diet are not radical, but they can have a big effect. Exercising might be more of a difficulty to most people who lead an inactive lifestyle.

People talk about cholesterol levels because there are two types of cholesterol. The two levels are HDL (good cholesterol) and LDL (bad cholesterol). LDL comes from animal fats (saturated fats), which are prevalent in red meat and full-fat dairy products like milk, butter, cream and cheese but it also is present in hydrogenated trans fats, which are common in margarines, pastry and crisps.

The first thing to do is try to cut out saturated fats by switching to chicken and drinking low-fat milk. You could also substitute the margarine or butter with one of the cholesterol-reducing margarines in the supermarkets. Just taking these two steps will make a colossal difference to many individuals, however, others may have to go a little further.

Grains are very useful in the battle against cholesterol, because of the amount of fibre in them. Therefore, you could give up your traditional English breakfast of cereals with milk followed by sausage, bacon, eggs and fried bread and instead eat Scots porridge oats with water or low-fat milk followed by wholemeal toast and cholesterol-decreasing margarine. This step alone will also significantly modify your cholesterol levels.

If you like a steak for luncheon occasionally, you might not have to give it up entirely, but if you usually order an eight ounce steak, get a four or six ounce one instead and if you eat that four times a week, cut back to two instead. Replace the steak with meals of skinless chicken and fish. Omega 3 fish oil is thought to be a big ally in the battle against cholesterol.

If you eat a great deal of junk food like greasy hamburgers and oily hot dogs, you will almost certainly have to give them up, but that is not a bad thing anyway. Endeavour to snack on citrus fruits as they are also your friends against LDL cholesterol.

It is not all doom and gloom on the dietary front for sufferers of cholesterol problems. The changes that will be suggested to you to sort out your cholesterol worries have probably already been suggested to you to sort out being over weight or having high blood pressure or even having diabetes.

They are fundamental, sensible minor lifestyle changes which will have a enormous effect on several aspects of your body. The same is true of exercise. Most individuals know that they should exercise more, it is just a shame that most of us need such a serious incentive before we do anything about it.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on numerous topics, but is now concerned with low fat low cholesterol diet. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?

Diet To Lower Triglyceride And Cholesterol

When someone takes a cholesterol blood test, there will normally be four numbers given to you which refer to the levels for LDL (bad cholesterol), HDL (good cholesterol), triglycerides and absolute cholesterol. The medical doctor will be looking to see if any of these statistics is considerably above the standard for your age and sex.

If they are too high, then the medical doctor will give one of two recommendations. First of all, the medical doctor ought to recommend lifestyle changes but if these fail then it is a lifetime of tablets. Some people have cholesterol issues for genetic reasons and for these individuals, medication might be the only answer.

The most common lifestyle alterations that are usually recommended are dietary alterations and exercise. If your readings are particularly high, you might have to take extreme measures to lower your cholesterol levels quickly.

Unfortunately, once people start taking anti-cholesterol tablets, they seldom come off them, so it is better to try other ways first of all. The predominant methods are decreasing dietary saturated fat and raising the degree of exercise dramatically.

Most individuals have an idea what cholesterol is and that it has two aspects, but not a lot of people know what triglycerides are. Triglyceride is also a sort of fat and if it is in profusion, it is a frequent indication that cholesterol is high as well, which means that it is an indicator of possible future heart disease.

The quickest manner of decreasing the levels of these fats in your blood is to stop eating saturated fats and trans fats. Red meats and full-fat dairy products are our main source of saturated fat. This means that if you want to engage the emergency brake, stop eating junk food, steak, pork, cheese and cream and stop drinking milk. You ought to also cut out trans fats which are hydrogenated vegetable oils as used in some margarines, pastry and crisps.

Putting an abrupt block on these foods will have an immediate and spectacular impact on your cholesterol and triglyceride levels. If you have to have a spread on your bread, use one of those that actually reduce cholesterol levels rather than elevate them.

The best thing is to begin with breakfast. Forget anything fried; porridge is very good for you as is wholemeal bread. You can eat an occasional boiled, poached or scrambled egg, because it is a myth that eggs are perilous to the sufferer from high cholesterol.

Steak and pork have to be limited to very occasional treats, yet chicken without skin is not too bad for you and fish is positively good. Try to boil, grill or steam food rather than fry it and if you need to use oil, use olive oil.

Fresh fruit, vegetables and grains are fantastic allies in the battle against high cholesterol, and so is exercise. Exercise does not have to be energetic, a half-hour’s walk in the morning and the evening will help a great deal. If you cannot find the motivation, adopt a dog.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several subjects, but is now concerned with low fat low cholesterol diet. If you want to know more, please visit our site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?