Cholesterol Treatment

If you have found out that you have unhealthy or high levels of cholesterol, you will want to do something about it.  Doing so will decrease the risk of heart disease including a heart attack, and stroke.

Here are ways that you can get your cholesterol under control:

Diet:  Because your body already makes all the cholesterol it needs for it to function properly, you do not need to provide it with more through your diet!  As a result, you want to eat foods that are low or non-existent in saturated fats and cholesterol.  These types of foods include lean meats and fish, poultry without the skin, whole grain breads and rices, fruits  and vegetables, and dairy products that are fat-free or 1%.  Foods to avoid include egg yolks which are high in cholesterol and organ meats.  Another way to flush cholesterol out of your body is by including more fiber in your diet.  For good health (such as preventing bowel cancers), it is recommended that you should be getting 25-35 grams of fiber per day anyway, so here is another reason to increase the fiber in your diet.  If you are not used to fiber, add it in gradually.  Another great thing to add into your diet is plant sterols, which keep the cholesterol from being absorbed into your body in the small intestine.  Sterols come from plant food such as vegetable oil, nuts, and seeds.

Here is a great book put out by the American Heart Association that will help you in meeting your goals of lowering your cholesterol and saturated fat in your diet that you will not be able to go without:

Exercise:  By exercising for at least 30 minutes every day, it aids with increasing your “healthier” HDL cholesterol while lowering your “less-healthy” LDL cholesterol.

Lose Weight:  This goes hand in hand with exercise.  Through exercise, you can lose weight which will also help lower the LDL cholesterol levels as well.

Medications:  Your doctor may decide that you need to be prescribed medication if your cholesterol levels don’t come down by making the above lifestyle changes or if your cholesterol is so high that it requires both lifestyle and medication intervention.  The statin drugs (with such names as Lipitor and Crestor, for example)  are the most commonly-prescribed, and they work in your liver by preventing cholesterol from being manufactured in your body.  There are also other kinds of drugs that lower your cholesterol levels by preventing absorption of cholesterol in your intestines and by disposing of it.  In the next post, I have a great video that I will be posting about medications for cholesterol as these medications do have side effects, and it will give you information about these side effects and things to consider before you start on a medication for cholesterol.

Also watch for a future post on information about natural alternatives to treating cholesterol.  In the meantine, this is an awesome book with very high reviews that you will want to buy: