Bad Cholesterol - Diet Or Lifestyle?

By Author: Paul Zayer
Total Articles: 63
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Cholesterol gets so much bad press that it's hard to understand why your body actually needs it. There are two kinds of cholesterol in your system, bad cholesterol or LDL cholesterol and good cholesterol also known as HDL cholesterol. In your body, cholesterol is necessary to make hormones, vitamin D and bile salts.

On the other hand, the bad cholesterol could cause you lots of inconveniences. The main concern with LDL cholesterol is that it could dump cholesterol onto artery walls that will create plaque. The plaque in turn will make the arteries to narrow and then block. This might be the cause of blood flow to be blocked, which is bad news for your heart.

There are many confusing terms being said when it comes to cholesterol. Dietary cholesterol is one of those terms. You may think that all dietary cholesterol is bad, but actually, dietary cholesterol does not raise blood cholesterol as much as you may think. The two bad guys here are saturated fats and trans fatty acids.

So when you think about cholesterol problems what you want to do is reduce your levels of bad cholesterol. The best ...
... way to do this is through dietary changes. Besides reducing foods with bad cholesterol such as meat, eggs, dairy and seafood, you could also eat different foods that would reduce LDL levels.

Trans fatty acids are found in many packaged food. Microwave popcorn, hard stick margarine and a number of French fries from some fast food chains are all responsible. By eliminating these foods or finding better substitutes you can cut down your consumption of trans fatty acids that will all contribute to the level of bad cholesterol in your system.

You can augment the quantity of good cholesterol in your system at the same time as decreasing the bad cholesterol. The reason for this is that the presence of good cholesterol in your body means that excess cholesterol will return to the liver so it can be expulsed out of your system. This indicates you need a lot of good cholesterol because high levels of good cholesterol means a reduced danger of heart disease.

Lifestyle modifications such as eating foods rich in soluble fiber and monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats will help to increase good cholesterol levels. You could also increase the time you spent on physical activity in your daily life to decrease cholesterol levels. Another good idea is to limit alcohol intake to one glass per day for women and two a day for men.