Just a few small changes in your kitchen can go a long way in lowering cholesterol and helping your heart.

• Use fiber-rich foods such as whole grains as your primary source of carbohydrates. Fiber is known to clear the plaque cholesterol builds on the walls of your arteries. Oatmeal is an excellent heart healthy breakfast.
• Explore recipes calling for fresh fruits and vegetables like berries, oranges, apples, pears, grapes, bell peppers, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, tomatoes, dark leafy greens, celery, squash and egg plant. These are both good sources of vitamins and also fiber.
• Replace the saturated fats found in animal foods such as meat, poultry and dairy products with unsaturated fats whenever possible. Specifically, the omega-3 type found in vegetable and fish oils are considered healthy choices. Omega-3’s are also showing promise for weight loss.
• Grill, bake or broil foods instead of frying. If you must fry use a non-stick pan or a non-stick spray like Pam.
• Egg whites are cholesterol free, but a single egg yolk has 213 milligrams of cholesterol. Eliminate the yolk whenever possible or choose range free eggs, which has less cholesterol then caged chicken eggs.
• Choose chicken instead of duck. Don’t forget to remove the skin before cooking since fats are stored in the skin.
• Focus on including proteins from soy, poultry and fish in your diet, instead of meat.
• While too much fat in your diet can increase blood cholesterol levels, a food’s fat content is not a reliable gauge for evaluating its cholesterol content. Liver and other organ meats may be low in fat, but bring high amounts of cholesterol to your diet.
• If you just can’t give up desert, then choose one that is fat free. Try topping it with fruit and you will improve its fiber content.

These are just a few suggestions to get you started but can make a big difference in the health of your heart and your cholesterol levels.

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First, I encourage you to learn about why our bodies produce cholesterol. We have learned that cholesterol is not the best indicator for heart disease.

You are much better off knowing if your arteries are inflamed (C-reactive-protein test), and knowing their elasticity (Cardiovascular Profile test). In my other articles, I go over these tests and their benefits.

If you have significantly elevated cholesterol, you should pay attention to it and treat it. Much depends on how elevated your cholesterol is, and if you’re willing to do some work to improve your risk of heart disease instead of just starting on the statin drugs.

If you are seriously considering a statin drug, you should understand the full picture.

Statin drugs are prescribed like candy. They are among the top two profit-making drugs in world, which makes them a multi-billion dollar class of drugs.

These drugs have significant risks: they cause decreased levels of Co Q10, they put strain on your liver and they frequently cause leg pain.

When I go to seminars about heart disease, I always hear other doctors saying, “Well, my patients won’t exercise and they won’t change their diets, so we have to give them these medications.”

I don’t think that’s true. I think that patients aren’t educated enough, and in that a 5 or 10-minute office visit, the physician cannot educate a patient. If patients are educated about what it takes to turn their health around, they are much more willing to make important changes in their lifestyles.

A careful analysis of the numerous studies published on the use of statin drugs would suggest that the people who may benefit from them are men who have already been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease – not just with high cholesterol.

In my opinion, the benefits of statin drugs, if they actually have benefits, are much less than people think. If you go to see your cardiologist and you have advanced heart disease and a total cholesterol reading of 380, maybe you should go on a cholesterol lowering medication.

Unfortunately, most cardiologists and most primary care physicians have not spent the time, probably because they don’t have the time, to educate themselves on what other options there are for decreasing the risk of heart disease besides taking medications.

There have been no studies designed to compare a holistic alternative medicine approach to going on these drugs. Those studies will probably never be done because they would not benefit the pharmaceutical companies that are making the medications and often funding the research.

So the question remains, are the side effects worth the benefit? The answer is not completely clear.

Dr. Malcom Kendrick states, “Statin drugs will not, on average, increase your life expectancy by one single day. Or to put it another way, taking a statin drug may change what is written on your death certificate, but it will not change the date.” (The Great Cholesterol Con, pg. 160)

If they are effective, it probably doesn’t relate so much to cholesterol as to inflammation.

Statin drugs have anti-inflammatory properties, but so do many wonderful nutrients. So if the benefits of the drugs are primarily for anti-inflammation, maybe people should consider taking anti- inflammatory nutrients instead of taking anti- inflammatory drugs with negative side effects.

If you do take these drugs, you should really be taking Co Q10, magnesium, antioxidants and fish oil. There is no question about it: if your arteries are in bad enough shape to need a medication, you should certainly take the basic nutrients that support the health of those arteries.

Both men and women may also want to consider taking testosterone after the age of 50 while taking a stain drug.

I have written many other articles about alternative approaches to heart disease prevention including anti-inflammatory nutrients where you can learn more.

I would like to offer you free access to my weekly Holistic Medicine Newsletter, Healthy Perspectives, where you can receive additional information on important health topics.

You can sign up by going to Holistic Medicine

Dr. Lisa Hosbein, MD, FACOG – The Wellness Doctor at Holistic Medicine

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A simple blood test is all it takes to find out if you have a normal cholesterol reading or if you need to make some changes to get it under control. But just what is a normal reading and how do you know if your numbers are to high? There are two schools of thought when it comes to this; one based on the total blood cholesterol levels and the other on the ratio of good to bad cholesterol.

The good, or HDL (high density lipoproteins), is primarily responsible for removing the bad, or LDL (low density lipoproteins) from the blood stream and returning it to the liver where it is removed from the body as waste. High levels of LDL in the blood stream leads to plaque build up in the arteries. Plaque deposits can clog arteries which is a symptom of coronary artery disease. A total blockage can cause a heart attack. If a plaque deposit breaks free as a blood clot it can cause a stroke.

Total cholesterol readings are obtained by combining the total amount of both high density and low density lipoproteins. From this total your doctor can make an informed decision as to whether or not you need to take measures to bring this number down. Another number that your doctor will look at is total LDL cholesterol. This number is important because LDL’s cause the damage that can lead to heart disease.

The breakdown range of total and LDL cholesterol numbers is as follows.

1. Normal Cholesterol Readings – A total level less than 200 mg/dl or LDL level less than 130 mg/dl is considered normal. People in this range have little risk of heart disease or stroke from cholesterol problems.

2. Borderline-High – A total level between 200-239 mg/dl or LDL level between 130-159 mg/dl is considered borderline-high. People who test in this range are recommended to make some lifestyle changes based around a healthy diet and exercise plan to reduce their levels to normal. People in this range usually do not need to be prescribed medications as simple lifestyle changes can usually bring about the desired results.

3. High Cholesterol Reading – Any test returning a total level above 240 mg/dl or LDL level above 160 mg/dl is considered high. People who test at this level must make some serious dietary changes along with starting an exercise program. They will also probably be given a prescription for a cholesterol lowering medication by their doctor.

For those who use the idea that the ratio between good and bad cholesterol is a good way to determine if levels are to high it works like this. Take the total cholesterol reading and divide it by the HDL level. This will give a ratio that if it’s more than 4 then it is time to take steps to lower the overall and LDL cholesterol levels.

If you feel you may not have a normal cholesterol reading then make an appointment with your doctor. A simple blood test is all it takes to determine if it is something you need to be worried about.

To learn more about cholesterol readings please visit the website Lowering Cholesterol by clicking here.

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If you’re worried about lowering your cholesterol level you’re not alone. Changing your diet to lower cholesterol is usually the first step in cholesterol maintenance, before medicines are added. People who have high cholesterol may be able to lower their cholesterol levels with these simple lifestyle changes:

• Step 5) The School of Medicine at Stanford University did a study consisting of 377 men and post-menopausal women, with high cholesterol. First they put them on a low-fat diet, and then had half of them to do aerobic exercise, and the other half did no form of exercise at all.

  After one year, the exercising group had significantly reduced their cholesterol levels – while the sedentary group showed no such reduction in their cholesterol. So the 5th step is to add aerobic exercise to your lifestyle.

• Step 4) Did you know that the average person makes about 75% of their blood cholesterol in their own liver, while only about 25% is absorbed from food. So you should be able to further reduce your cholesterol with dietary changes.

  A low-fat diet with no trans-fats will lower your cholesterol anywhere from 8% to 20%. There are several very good low-fat diets – the Dash Diet, Mediterranean Diet, the South Beach Diet, Ultrametabolism Diet, and Weight Watchers Diet are all great diets to reduce your fat and trans-fat intake.

• Step 3) One of the reasons your body produces Cholesterol is a self preservation tactic. Your arteries develop cracks and stress factures as a natural occurrence. Your body must patch these cracks and factures or you will bleed to death.

  The substance of choice for your body to use is Collagen. However, if the raw ingredients needed aren’t present in sufficient quantities to produce this miraculous elixir, cholesterol can also be used instead.

  So to keep your collagen production at its peak, rather than giving your liver a reason to produce additional cholesterol, give your body plenty of vitamin C (ascorbic acid).

• Step 2) 60 recent heart bypass surgery patients were divided into groups. The first group had no dietary restrictions, while the second and third group had one white or one red grapefruit each day.

  The second and third group had significantly lowered cholesterol levels while the no grapefruit group showed no reduction. But the red grapefruit group also had a reduction in their triglycerides. So step 2 is “Eat Red Grapefruit”, which will incidentally help with step 3 as well.

• Step 1) A study of 14,600 men and women ages 45 to 75, recently showed the participants’ total cholesterol declined as their number of meals per day increased. Those who ate five or six times a day had the lowest total cholesterol, on average approximately 5% lower, while the highest measurements were found among those who ate only one or two meals a day.

If you find a diet to lower cholesterol and follow these 5 steps, you should have your cholesterol to healthy levels as quickly as possible.

B.J. Gordey is the owner of Top10-diets.com. Are you looking for a diet to lower cholesterol and ways to add a low cholesterol diet to your lifestyle. You can learn a lot more about how a diet that works can help you at Top10-Diets.com.

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