10 Tips Lowering Your Cholesterol
So you have high cholesterol level on your blood and need to lower it? That is not a big surprise considering how many people have high blood cholesterol level these days. To help lowering your cholesterol, here are 10 tips you can follow and start today.
As with anything related to health, a proper diet and exercise are the two vital factors. What you eat everyday is critical to lower your blood cholesterol levels, so that is what will be included on this article.
One thing you should understand first is the differences between LDL and HDL cholesterol. For simple understanding think of HDL as “healthy” and LDL as “lousy.” HDL can actually help sweep cholesterol out of your blood vessels while on the other hand LDL allows it to deposit inside your artery walls.
The good news, there’s always a good news, is that you can change your cholesterol for the better. Here are things you need to do:Â
1. Have a nice sandwich with whole wheat bread or a pita with some lean turkey and lots of fresh veggies. Avoid thosee hot dogs, bologna, and salami, and hold the Mayo. All of those are highly processed and filled with fat and cholesterol.
2. Fish like salmon is vwery good for your health. Look for wild red salmon varieties, which are very high in Omega-3 fatty acids (good fat.) Also, flax seed is a good source of Omega-3s.
3. Avoid Trans fats! Not only do they raise the lousy LDL cholesterol level, they can also lower your healthy HDL levels! Try to stay away from certain foods like margarine, shortening, and processed foods containing partially hydrogenated soybean oil.
4. Go ahead, go nuts! Look for walnuts mainly but you also need to try almonds, macadamia nuts, cashews, and pecans. Nuts are high in fat, but it’s the good and healthy kind of fat. (Also, use natural peanut butter instead of the normal kind, which contains unhealthy Trans fats.)
5. Limit desserts as much as you can and try to eat only the healthier ones like angel food cake, graham crackers, Jell-O, and fat-free frozen yogurt.
6. Eat foods that contain high fiber. As examples it include whole wheat bread, oatmeal, fruits, vegetables, beans, and some cereals. (Look for the boxes that say “may help lower cholesterol.”)
7. Use the grill. If you’re going to have steak or burgers, grill them at home and use lean meat. This practice avoids the grease, is fun, and the meat tastes great.
8. Find a new salad dressing. Most of them are full of Trans fats and cholesterol. Olive oil is good, and maybe add vinegar or lemon juice. Also, skip the bacon bits, croutons, and egg yolks.
9. Go overboard on fruits and vegetables. They contain no cholesterol and they have lots of nutrients like antioxidants.
Here are some examples: green peas, broccoli, cauliflower, apples, oranges, mangos, papaya, pineapple, tomato, garlic, onions, spinach, water chestnuts, bananas, apricots, blueberries, and kiwi.
10. Avoid fast food like french fries and anything else from the deep fryer. Those foods will raise your cholesterol like crazy, so stay away from the burger joints if you can.
11. Bonus tip: Use spices like pepper and oregano to add flavor to your dishes. They are a healthy alternative to other toppings like Mayo.
That was not a real hard thing to do, right? Just start and push yourself to make some of these changes and get plenty of exercise like walking, jogging, swimming, or playing basketball. You will find your cholesterol level lower in no time!
[tags]health, cholesterol, life, eat, nutrition, health food[/tags]
June 14th, 2007 at 5:29 am
[...] critical to lower your blood cholesterol levels, so that is what will be included on this article.read more | digg [...]