What To Do To Lower Cholesterol Level In Blood?
i’m 18 and i’ve just been diagnosed with hypercholesterolemia (familial), what can i do to control my cholesterol level beside regular exercise or taking drugs (statins)? what type of food should i avoid? and what type of food is proven to reduce LDL or maybe increase HDL?
First off, it’s good that your taking an initiave to be proactive in your health. There are many ways to reduce cholesterol levels as far as eating and lifestyle changes. To begin with, getting your blood lipid levels monitored regularly is important, maintaining an optimum weight, implementing a excercise plan and reducing dietary saturated fats and cholesterols (no more than 300 mg/day) and increasing soluable fiber in the diet such as oat bran, apples, grapefruit, and broccoli, and of course elimaniting tobacco use (if you smoke). The use of plant sterols and stanols has been shown to reduce blood cholesterol levels by actually excreting the cholesterol from the body and decreasing LDL’s. Plant sterols can be found in wheat, corn, rye, oats, rice, nuts, and olive oil. Commercially, stanols and sterols can be found in foods fortified with Reducol, salad dressings, certain cereals and even some fruit juices. Statins are the first line of defense drugs in hypercholesterolemia and after that of course your bile acid resins such as questran and nicotinic acids would follow that (niacin) but with the niacin much higher doses are needed to produce its antilipidemic effects (with these much higher doses you get the flushing, nausea, and diarrhea etc.. not very fun side effects that is expected with niacin and so therefore is used as a 3rd line of treatement). Regularly niacin is given 25/mg per day but for lowering cholesterol the usual dose is 2-3 g/day. Also if you are diabetic niacin would not be a good option as it can raise blood glucose levels. Fourth line of defense are your fibric acid agents such as tricor, vytorin etc. So there are many options available to you as far as medications as the above mentioned foods can help you on your path to higher HDL’s and lower bad guys. Good luck and cheers.
Avoid foods high in saturated fats. Keep to a low fat diet. Low salt diet amd low sugar diet. This means no more greasy take-aways for you.
Vit B-3 (Niacin) can reduce LDL and raise HDL. But you are already taking statin. so no need to take B-3. No egg yolks, no chicken skin, no butter, nothing made from Milk. eat Oatmeal every single day. use water. add some salt, cinnamon, crushed walnuts, and some fruits of your choice for taste but don’t make it with milk. Read the labels. No red meat
Eat oatmeal and fish with omega-3 fatty acids and walnuts. Avoid fried foods, saturated fat in any form, and red meat.
fried foods and foods high in trans fats