Health & Medical Heart Diseases

Foods to Lower Cholesterol Can Help You Hit the Sweet Spot in Cholesterol Control

The subject of cholesterol, and ultimately foods to lower cholesterol is an interesting one.
It seems that cholesterol that is too low (below 150 mg/dL) is bad and cholesterol over 232 or so is also bad.
To drive home this point let's look at a research study involving 3,500 Japanese American men residing in Hawaii.
To their surprise researchers found a high death rate among the men with lowest cholesterol levels (about 149 mg/dL) than among men whose cholesterol levels circled around the supposedly borderline 232 mg/dL mark.
We often hear of the dangers of high cholesterol but rarely hear anything about very low cholesterol.
Very low cholesterol is known as hypercholesterolemia and can be a precursor to malnutrition, an overactive thyroid, and certain forms of cancer.
You are probably wondering what all this has to do with foods to lower cholesterol.
My point is this, by adopting a healthy lifestyle, including foods to lower cholesterol, you will be able to keep your cholesterol levels in a healthy range, not too low and not too high.
It is generally accepted that a person can lower their cholesterol levels up to 35 percent simply by eating certain foods and avoiding high saturated fat choices such as cheese, butter, and fatty cuts or red meat.
Honestly, there are quite a few foods that promote healthy cholesterol level either by reducing overall cholesterol, increasing good cholesterol (HDL) or reducing bad cholesterol (LDL).
Let's look at some of these: salmon, mackerel, albacore tuna, skinless white meat chicken or turkey, soy, tofu, egg whites, canola oil, avocados, olive oil, vegetables, walnuts, almonds, pomegranates, oat bran, oat meal, apples, brown rice, beans, garlic, chocolate (sugar free), and margarine containing stanols and sterols.
Our list of foods that lower cholesterol come in many different forms and I would venture to say that there are a few surprises on our list.
But which, if any of the above foods to lower cholesterol could be classified as super foods.
For that information I had to enlist the help of the well respected Mayo Clinic.
The Mayo Clinic recently released its list of 5 super foods to lower cholesterol.
They are oat bran, oatmeal, walnuts, salmon, and olive oil.
What Next? Lowering cholesterol, in most cases, is about changing old habits, adopting new healthier eating habits, and enlisting the help of convention medications such as statins or natural cholesterol reducing remedies if needed.
Put simply, this basically means finding ways to increase HDL (good cholesterol) and decrease LDL (bad cholesterol levels).
By using your culinary imagination I'm sure you can come up with a number of delicious recipes made totally from our list of foods to lower cholesterol, and reign in those out of control cholesterol numbers once and for all.


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