Ways To Lower Cholesterol Weight Loss Diet Nutrition Tips Guide

Ways To Lower Cholesterol With Better Food Choices

By Tracy Kerr-Walshe

Ways to lower cholesterol include making better food choices to improve your nutrition. For example, you can eat lean meat, by cutting out all the fat, prior to cooking meat. With chicken, most of the fat is on the skin, so once you remove the skin from chicken meat, you have fat free chicken! You can either remove the skin yourself, or pay a little more and buy skinless chicken.

You can review your options and eat a snack between meals, but it should be a healthy snack. For example, fresh fruit or a small amount of nuts like almonds and walnuts. Remember, nuts contain a high amount of fat, but also help to reduce your cholesterol, so eat nuts in moderation to reduce your cholesterol.

These are some of the many ways to lower cholesterol.

Diet High In Fat And Sugar Lead To High Cholesterol Levels

Tens of millions of Americans have high cholesterol levels – too high for good health. In large part, this is due to diets high in fat, sugar and simple carbohydrates. The liver is the organ which bears the brunt of these dietary indiscretions.

As we get older, our cholesterol readings tend to jump. If your doctor has tested you and found your cholesterol readings to be rising to an unhealthy level, you may be prescribed one of the statin drugs, which causes your liver to stop producing cholesterol.

Lowering Your Cholesterol With Better Nutrition

This is one method of cholesterol control, but perhaps not the best solution. Here we’ve got some ways to lower cholesterol naturally, through the omission of cholesterol rich foods and the addition of foods known to reduce cholesterol levels.

We’ll start off with naming foods which you’ll want to avoid: saturated fats, such as those found in butter and milk proteins contribute to the synthesis of cholesterol in the liver. Read your food labels carefully for the saturated fat content. In this case, when you’re looking for ways to lower cholesterol readings, less is more, in favor of cholesterol control!

Eating Less Food With High Levels Of Sugar And Simple Carbs

You also want to limit your consumption of sugar and simple carbs. When you digest these substances, your body experiences a rise in serum insulin, promoting an increase in lipid production – the ‘bad’ cholesterol.

Now, let’s get to the good guys, the foods which provide ways to lower cholesterol naturally, through foods which are easy to integrate into your daily menus.

1. Veggies: vegetable proteins reduce your blood cholesterol levels. Consume plenty of these, particularly legumes, and make your portions generous! Beets, carrots, yams, artichokes and bitter greens provide support for your liver and protect against overproduction of cholesterol.

2. Increase your consumption of fruits which contain pectin, such as apples, peaches, plums and berries. These foods are also high in water soluble fiber and are one of the best ways to lower cholesterol.

Lemons play a highly supportive role in the health of your liver. Gooseberries help reduce blood serum cholesterol and triglyceride levels by promoting metabolism of fats in the liver. Research suggests this is due to the rich trace mineral content of the fruit.

When serving goose, turkey, lamb, duck, beef or pork – heavy on the cholesterol – a side of gooseberry jam or jelly reduces the uptake of cholesterol in the meats.

3. Omega-3 oils: Cold water fish, such as salmon, halibut, sea bass and sardines are packed with Omega-3 oils, proven to help decrease cholesterol. Alternatively, you may achieve similar results with 1000-1500 mg of fish oil capsules daily, decreasing the synthesis of cholesterol and increasing the breakdown of triglycerides.

Nuts and seeds are also rich sources of the Omega-3 oils. For example, walnuts, eaten in moderate amounts on a regular basis, decreases serum cholesterol levels, while favorably modifying the LDL.

In a California study of men and women with an average cholesterol reading of 240, daily consumption of just 3 ½ ounces of almonds over a two month period reduced their cholesterol by 10-15% as compared to the group who consumed equal amounts of fat from cheese.

4. Seasonings: one of the most flavorful ways to lower cholesterol! Use garlic liberally, in salads, soups, on breads and in meat dishes. Garlic has been amply demonstrated to reduce cholesterol. Ginger is another cholesterol fighter.

Make a pot of fresh ginger tea, or try adding some finely minced fresh ginger and a bit of orange juice, cooked to a syrup in a saucepan of carrots. Crushed cardamom seeds, added to stews and soups, both improves the flavor and holds high cholesterol content of fatty meats in check, once completely digested.

Each of these suggestions on ways to lower cholesterol levels naturally are easy, nutritious and delicious. Now is the time to get your cholesterol down!

Shopping For Healthy Food

Especially now that you know how to choose the right food for reducing cholesterol levels, while avoiding the wrong foods that will increase cholesterol in your body. Next time you go food shopping, you should read carefully food labels on a food product, to ensure high fat, high sugar and high cholesterol ingredients are not included in your food products. There are plenty of alternative food products, that can replace your current food products, to help improve your nutrition.

Many of the food stores now carry many healthy products, that were only available in health food stores a few years ago. You can now find a healthy food section in almost any food store. For example, you can find no fat yogurt with probiotic bacteria, to help your digestion. The probiotic bacteria can help get rid of bad, pathogenic bacteria in your intestines and help to improve your digestion at the same time.

Choosing Organic Produce

When you buy fruit and vegetables to help reduce your cholesterol, buy organic produce, in order to avoid buying fruit and vegetables treated with pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals. Many people, these days, grow their own produce with a fruit and vegetable organic garden, in order to avoid the chemicals found on produce in many food stores.

Buying and growing healthy food to improve your nutrition, is one of the better ways to lower cholesterol.

Please Note: All information given on this site is for general information purposes and is not to replace any medical opinion or medical diagnosis given by a qualified medical doctor, a dietitian/nutritional expert or any other medical expert, as individual circumstances may vary. Please see your medical doctor, before any action is taken to alleviate symptoms.

This Article was about Ways To Lower Cholesterol.

About the Author:
Tracy Kerr-Walshe is an author of articles on health, diet, weight loss and nutrition including Whole Foods, Organic Foods, Healthy Snacks, Effective Weight Loss, Full Body Detox, Juice Fasting.
Keep a lookout for more of her articles coming soon.

Did You Know?

What happens when cholesterol gets too high?

Well when LDL gets too high then the cholesterol begins to accumulate on the artery walls and then hardens into plaque. The build up continues until the entire artery is blocked off. This added blockage makes it hard for blood to get to the heart where it can be pumped to the rest of the body. It can lead to a heart attack or stroke.

When HDL levels are high this is a good thing because researchers believe that HDL helps rid the body of cholesterol build-up. That is why a diet rich in foods that promote HDL is always heavily recommended.