To keep your cholesterol levels optimal, you need diverse balanced diet and a healthy way of living. High cholesterol level in blood is a health risk, and its accumulation in arteries can lead to arteriosclerosis, heart attack or stroke. Cholesterol is a type of lipid which is necessary for human body’s synthesis of different hormones and bile salts which are required to digest fats from food. However, if cholesterol level in blood is high, it presents a huge health risk.
Excess cholesterol piles up in inner walls of arteries, and with time, blood flow becomes difficult and arteries lose their elasticity. High cholesterol level is one of the leading factors for heart attack and stroke.
The body regulates cholesterol levels by itself, and it creates only as much cholesterol as we need. Issues emerge when we increase our cholesterol intake through food and increase its levels.
To prevent bad effects of high cholesterol, it is necessary to change lifestyle meaning that you need to implement more exercise, healthier diet and that you need to lose some weight. The healthy diet will prevent cholesterol issues, but it can also help you fight high cholesterol. Besides unbalanced diet, genetic predisposition has some connection to high cholesterol. If somebody in your family has high cholesterol, high blood pressure, stroke or heart attack, cholesterol should be monitored in the early twenties. Women should control their cholesterol more often when they get into menopause, and men should do the same when they get into the forties if they didn’t have any previous medical conditions which could affect cholesterol, like thyroid disease.
Before menopause, women are somewhat protected from high cholesterol by estrogen, while men’s testosterone protects them from high HDL cholesterol, which also means that they are at higher risk of developing heart disease and vascular disease.
What To Eat?
To keep you cholesterol level optimal, you need the diverse diet. Besides regular meals, you need to eat a lot of fruit, vegetables, grains and fish. You should also lower the intake of saturated fat found in whole milk, cheese, meat, and you should replace these things with turkey meat and chicken. Food preparation is important, you should stay away from roux and fried meat and fish. You should eat fresh vegetables with the addition of only one tablespoon of olive oil. All meat should be prepared on Teflon. Pay special attention to pulses, garlic and olive oil which lower LDL, increase HDL and improves their interrelations.
Good And Bad Cholesterol
There are two types of cholesterol. The first group is made of so-called bad cholesterol (LDL) whose accumulation can lead to arteriosclerosis.The second group is made of so-called good cholesterol (HDL) which links excess of bad cholesterol, removes it from wall arteries and prevents arteriosclerosis. Our body need a certain amount of cholesterol, and that process is regulated by body’s creation of certain amount of cholesterol we need.