High Cholesterol Weight Loss Diet Nutrition Tips Guide

High Cholesterol And Managing Your Diet

By Tracy Kerr-Walshe

Preventing high cholesterol is important to preventing heart conditions. In order to know how to prevent high cholesterol, it is important to learn more about cholesterol as a whole and be able to tell the difference between good and bad cholesterol. Learning how to exercise properly and have dietary balance is a must in the fight against high cholesterol and heart disease that can cause stroke or heart attacks.

Half of the battle of preventing high cholesterol is knowing what cholesterol is and what you can do to prevent your cholesterol levels from getting out of control.

Cholesterol is a fatty substance, also called a lipid, that is an important part of the cell membrane (outer lining) in animals. It is also circulating through the blood of humans. The cholesterol that is in our blood typically comes from two different sources, either in the food we eat or produced in the liver.

High Cholesterol Foods

A lot of the high cholesterol intake comes when we eat foods like meats, dairy products, fish and poultry. Foods that come from plants have absolutely no cholesterol intake, but organ meats (such as liver) have some of the highest concentrations of cholesterol that we know of. After we eat these foods, the cholesterol is absorbed into our intestines and forms a sort of protein "coat".

When we talk about having high cholesterol, we refer to having high levels of "bad cholesterol" or LDL cholesterol. LDL levels are generally associated with heart problems and heart disease. The particular cholesterol type forms itself as hardened proteins on cell and artery walls which causes the formation of a thick substance that can eventually clog the arteries.

Low Levels Of Good And High Levels Of Bad Cholesterol Create Problems To Your Health

HDL cholesterol is known as good cholesterol. HDL cholesterol prevents heart problems by taking the bad cholesterol away from the artery walls and sending it to the liver for proper disposal. High levels of bad cholesterol and low levels of good would create an internal problem because the arteries become clogged and none of the LDL goes to the liver for disposal.

When we talk about having "high cholesterol", we really are talking about having too much LDL cholesterol and too little HDL cholesterol. The overall cholesterol level is generally found by taking the sum of LDL along with the total sum of the HDL cholesterol, along with intermediate density cholesterol (IDL). If the amount of bad cholesterol outweighs the amount of good considerably, the person is said to have high cholesterol.

This Article was about High Cholesterol.

About the Author:
Tracy Kerr-Walshe is an author of dieting articles including Effective Weight Loss, Full Body Detox, Juice Fasting.
Keep a lookout for more of her articles coming soon.