Peter Clark asked:


There are many men looking for a good diet to lower cholesterol, or other cholesterol lowering strategies. Is lowering cholesterol important to your health?

Yes you bet it is, and if you need to lower your cholesterol read on for some tips on beginning a diet to lower cholesterol naturally.

Your diet plays a role in how much you reduce, or increase, your cholesterol. While some people with high cholesterol may understand what foods lead to this common health problem, they are often unaware of what a diet for lowering cholesterol should look like.

Here, you will learn more about what types of foods are good to include in a diet to lower cholesterol.

For breakfast, you will want to avoid eggs with yolks. If you do feel as though you are in the mood for eggs, you should consider only cooking egg whites. If you really want to follow a diet for treating high cholesterol, you will be sure to eat oatmeal for breakfast.

Incorporating oatmeal into your diet is known to be one of the best ways to lower your LDL cholesterol. To reduce your cholesterol even further, consider adding fresh berries to your oatmeal. 

A diet for lowering cholesterol should consist of lots of vegetables. Some of the different dishes that you may want to include in your diet plan include stir fry’s, garden salads and vegetable soup. When you choose meat, be sure to read labels.

Looks for cuts of meat which are lower in fat. Also keep in mind that if you are on a diet for treating high cholesterol, it is a good idea to avoid certain cooking methods, such as deep drying.

A diet for treating high cholesterol should include whole grains, instead of starches, which may increase your cholesterol. Avoid white pasta, rice and bread.

You will also want to be sure to avoid potatoes, which are known to be very fattening and may also increase your cholesterol levels.

Finally, it is important to pay attention to what you are cooking with. Oils and butter should both be avoided if you wish to successfully follow a diet for lowering cholesterol. Consider replacing these fattening foods with pepper, chili and other metabolism boosters instead.

Making healthier choices is the main key to following a diet meant to lower cholesterol. Avoid all of the foods which you have always been told are fattening and opt for ones which are known to be healthy. A diet for lowering cholesterol is one of the easiest ways to treat this common health problem and, ultimately, can help add years to your life. 

However don’t just rely on changing your diet to lower your cholesterol, there is a lot more you can do.

Paul Rodgers asked:


Achieving lower cholesterol is one of the best ways to protect yourself from heart attack and stroke. The more natural and cost effective way to lower cholesterol is to eat foods low in cholesterol. Using herbs to lower cholesterol is safe and effective.

One of the best things that you can to do lower cholesterol is to quit smoking and decrease the amount of fatty foods in your diet. For most people, the best way to lower cholesterol is to reduce their intake of saturated fats and to increase physical activity.

The Hypercet Blood Pressure Formula is a proprietary blend of five essential elements for healthy blood pressure. The Hypercet Cholesterol Formula is designed to help maintain healthy cholesterol levels and to assist normal body functions for optimum health. “Often the only treatment needed to lower cholesterol is thyroid medication.

Diet and exercise are imperative

To lower cholesterol naturally, diet and exercise are imperative. Diets rich in beans, peas, rice bran, barley, oat bran, whole grains, citrus fruits and apple pulp can help lower cholesterol levels, especially when additionally cutting back on animal products and fats. Diet can be a very effective tool for lowering blood pressure.

To keep your cholesterol low, your total fat intake shouldn’t be more than 25% to 33% of your diet –and most of those fats should be the good kind, like vegetable fats(mono unsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats), and omega-3 fatty acids, foundmostly in fish. He began including steel-cut oatmeal, eggplant, roasted soybeans, whole-wheat pasta and Brussels sprouts in his diet. Even better, the story includes a link to two favorite recipes from his cholesterol-lowering diet.

Exercise decreases the bad LDL-cholesterol

Surely, you’ve already asked you these questions: Those higher cholesterol is treating with herbs, good food, exercises or drugs. Exercise decreases

the bad LDL-cholesterol and increases the”good” HDL-cholesterol.

Exercise, not smoking and a high-fiber diet low in cholesterol and fat will improve your cholesterol count. Exercise itself doesn’t directly lower cholesterol, but will strengthen the heart and entire circulatory system. Exercise can apparently help keep a fat person healthy and maintain lower cholesterol levels, keep bad cholesterol levels down, without massive dietary changes,

nor having to lose weight.

Simply out of habit, not caring what foods to eat that lower your cholesterol and not giving your body regular easy-going exercises, the accumulation reaches a point where undesirable consequences as symptoms begin to show up.

Healthy Lifestyle

Healthy lifestyle and diet is key to prevention of high cholesterol levels. Lower cholesterol is important to living a long and healthy life, one that is free from heart disease or stroke. You should also maintain a healthy lifestyle through diet, exercise, and weight maintenance.

As you know, there are populations that have lived healthy lives on all meat diets and populations that have lived healthy lives on all vegetable diets. Some people’s bodies are simply genetically predisposed to make a lot of cholesterol; it doesn’t matter whether they eat a perfect diet or are a healthy weight.

Just as you wouldn’t bet all your money on a single stock, Jenkins says you shouldn’t bet your health on a single kind of healthy food.

Natural way to lower cholesterol

Natural way to lower cholesterol is to have low cholesterol diet and exercise regularly. Or you can choose a natural means where the only side effect is better health. And since your cholesterol naturally rises as you get older, it seems to sneak up on you without warning.

The good news is, you can lower you cholesterol naturally by taking responsibility over your body and your health and award yourself with a complete lifestyle makeover. There are natural herbs, vitamins and minerals that can help lower LDL cholesterol and raise HDL cholesterol in the body.

Supplements lower cholesterol naturally

Research also shows that improvement results can be dramatic if you were to strongly consider the combined use of regular exercises and the regular use of nutritional supplements, which are clinically proven to lower cholesterol naturally with no side effects.

Remember that the approach with drugs and / or dietary supplements is to supplement and not to replace a healthy diet and exercise. The most effective way to lower cholesterol when all of this does not work sufficiently, is with drugs and / or herbal dietary supplements. However, there are quite a number of supplements that have been clinically proven to lower cholesterol.

Conclusion

To lower cholesterol is one of your greatest health challenges, cholesterol induced strokes are not a pretty sight. A significant way to lower

cholesterol is to include adequate amounts of healthy fiber in your diet.

Another important element to a persons lifestyle that can be enhanced when wondering how to lower cholesterol is by establishing an exercise program or increasing an exercise program. As such one way to lower cholesterol is to avoid foods that contain high cholesterol or at least minimize their consumption, that is animal and dairy products. The most popular and well known food that can actually lower cholesterol is eating adequate amounts of oatmeal every day.

To Find Out More…

Ruth Tan asked:


(c) 2008 Ruth Tan

A Honey Spoonful a Day Keeps the Free Radicals at Bay!

There have been many reports that honey lowers cholesterol.

Now, what exactly is cholesterol? It is a type of lipid or fat produced by the liver needed to make vitamin D and some hormones, build cell walls, and create bile salts that help you digest fat. Our liver produces enough of this waxy substance (about 1,000 milligrams a day), so we don’t have to worry if there is need to get supplements. In fact, many foods contain cholesterol and sometimes it’s hard to ensure that we don’t get an excessive intake of cholesterol that could lead to serious health problems. Eggs, meats, and whole-fat dairy products (including milk, cheese, and ice cream) are loaded with cholesterol, whereas vegetables, fruits, and grains contain none. Because cholesterol can’t travel alone through the bloodstream, it has to combine with certain proteins, which pick up the cholesterol and transport it to different parts of the body. When the cholesterol and protein are combined, a lipoprotein is formed. Most cholesterol is LDL/bad (low-density lipoproteins) cholesterol which can narrow the arteries and clog the blood vessels that supply the vital organs such as the heart, brain, kidneys and intestines. This is why it’s so important to start paying attention to our cholesterol levels by maintaining a healthy weight, keeping an exercise regime to strengthen your heart, avoiding foods that are high in saturated fat and trans fat and following a low fat diet that contains many low-cholesterol foods such as fruits, veggies, whole grains (like breads and cereals), legumes (beans), and fish. When you eat more of these carbohydrate-rich foods, you will eat less of the foods higher in fat and cholesterol.

Honey and cholesterol-free recipies are often associated in the world of healthy foods. Not only is honey free of cholesterol, it has been reported that adding small amounts of it in the daily diet could even help keep cholesterol levels in check. High in minerals such as potassium, calcium and sodium and B complex vitamins, honey is known to be a cholesterol fighter – honey lowers cholesterol in our blood. The antioxidants in honey prevent cholesterol from being moved out of the blood and into the lining of the blood vessels. Daily consumption of this natural sweetener could raise blood levels of protective antioxidant compounds in the body.

It is believed that honey contain about the same range of antioxidants as green vegetables, such as broccoli and spinach and also comparable to fruits such as apples, bananas, oranges and strawberries. And the antioxidant level in mead , a wine made with honey is believed to be comparable to white wine in terms of its antioxidant capability. Generally, it’s been known that dark honey lowers cholesterol more effectively than lighter honey. For instance, Buckwheat honey contains the highest levels of antioxidants. The intake of honey and cinnamon, mixture also has been reported to have innate healing characteristics that appear to help diabetics control both blood sugar and cholesterol levels.

So, see if honey lowers cholesterol by kick starting your day with this honey and lemon cleansing tonic: mix a spoonful or two of honey and the juice of half a lemon into a cup of hot water and drink each morning before breakfast. Incorporate honey in more places where you might be using table sugar, and use it often as a home remedy, in no time, you may find a significant increase in the amount of antioxidant chemical compounds in your body.