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High Cholesterol

Hi there

Has anyone had or have high cholesterol and what have you found (food wise or other) that has helped bring it down?

Widget1974
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Comments

  • kitschkitty
    kitschkitty Posts: 3,177 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    Oats and Omega 3 are my recomendations.
    A waist is a terrible thing to mind.
  • High Cholestorel. Now isn't there some interesting new evidence about this that says that basically it's a big load of nonsense? People who live longest have the highest cholesterol levels or something like that.
    If you google it, you will find the new reports.
  • Dietary intake of cholesterol normally accounts for 10-20% of total cholesterol. Most of the cholesterol in your body is made in the liver as it is essential for the body.

    Unless your diet is hugely unhealthy, changing it will probably not affect your cholesterol levels to a large extent (although there are of course other benefits to improving your diet).

    Cholesterol is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, however it is only one risk factor out of many, and it is important to address as many risk factors as possible rather than focussing on one alone.
  • Unless your diet is hugely unhealthy, changing it will probably not affect your cholesterol levels to a large extent
    Have a look at The graphs here and look, in particular, at the changes produced by the low carb diet.

    Cholesterol is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, however it is only one risk factor out of many, and it is important to address as many risk factors as possible rather than focussing on one alone.
    Bill Lands has some interesting points to make about omega 6 intake and CVD risk.

    Balancing Omega 3 and Omega 6 to Maintain Good Health Bill Lands

    You can listen to Bill Lands on a recent BBC food programme here sorry the link doesn't work. Maybe the BBC will fix it later. It the Sunday 01 February 2009 edition of The Food Programme the Bill Lands bit it towards the end of the programme, when the BBC fix the link.
    My weight loss following Doktor Dahlqvist' Dietary Program
    Start 23rd Jan 2008 14st 9lbs Current 10st 12lbs
  • mazza111
    mazza111 Posts: 6,327 Forumite
    Got my cholesterol test back today, and it was on the high side of normal (from what the doctor said), but as I didn't know I was having it tested, I hadn't fasted for it. So from what she said, it would probably be ok, as i had eaten a couple of slices of toast with my lurpak on it :D . All doctor recommended was to grill things instead of frying and try to stick to a low fat diet. But don't they always say that
    4 Stones and 0 pounds or 25.4kg lighter :j
  • My weight loss following Doktor Dahlqvist' Dietary Program
    Start 23rd Jan 2008 14st 9lbs Current 10st 12lbs
  • wifeforlife
    wifeforlife Posts: 2,735 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Photogenic
    Sorry for jumping on this aswell, but I got my test results yesterday 7.83 which is basically double the recommended levels.

    After a slight panic attack, I've been advised to follow a low cholesterol diet, but at age 26 it was a bit of a shock. Will have to make alot of changes to correct this, especially as my grandfather died at age 47 of a heart attack and my other grandfather had to have a full bypass on his heart in his sixties.

    Cate
  • orb_3
    orb_3 Posts: 31 Forumite
    A colleague has Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), discovered when a sibling of his died in his thirties. It's a genetic disorder that leads to very high cholesterol levels and is linked with early death if not detected and treated.

    He tells me that the one thing that has reduced his cholesterol by the most was cutting out alcohol, ymmv.

    R
  • Cholesterol is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, however it is only one risk factor out of many, and it is important to address as many risk factors as possible rather than focussing on one alone.
    Dietary fats, carbohydrate, and progression of coronary atherosclerosis in postmenopausal womenThe best way to reduce risk factors from this looks like removing all sugar and white flour in the diet. Even better would be to reduce all the other major carbohydrate sources such as bread, pasta, rice and potatoes together with increasing ones saturated fat intake.

    This interesting study from Harvard in 2004 showed that the more carbohydrates the participants ate the more their coronary arteries narrowed.

    If we look at the plots here we see looking first at the carbohydrate intake, that the study participants were divided into four groups according to how much carbohydrate they consumed.

    Columns height shows how much coronary vessels narrowed during the study (this was measured with ultrasound inside the vessels)

    The black bars are carbohydrate intake. Note, those who ate the most carbohydrates were those who suffered the most narrowing and those who ate least had almost no change before or after.

    So who can guess what happened with saturated fat intake?

    The black bars in top picture are intake of saturated fat.
    Again, the participants were divided into four groups according to how much saturated fat they consumed.

    As we see those who ate the least intake of saturated fat had the greatest increase in narrowing of the coronary arteries.

    The quarter of the participants who ate the most saturated fat, on the other hand, had no increased narrowing of the arteries at all.

    If you could see their coronary arteries that would have shown how they had over the period become healthier.

    What conclusion can we draw from this and similar studies?

    They keep warning us of the dangers of saturated fat, but that is based only on changes in blood fats. Those changes have been shown to be harmless. Nobody has proven link between saturated fat and illness or death.

    In practice, the higher intake of saturated fat may only be advantageous, as this study showed.

    Saturated fat intake may reduce atherosclerotic progression and carbohydrate intake may increase atherosclerotic progression, especially refined carbohydrates.
    My weight loss following Doktor Dahlqvist' Dietary Program
    Start 23rd Jan 2008 14st 9lbs Current 10st 12lbs
  • Ted, lets assume you are a male, aged 60 who smokes, had type 2 diabetes diagnosed 5 years ago and your father died of a heart attack aged 49. Would you take a statin?
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