Changing your diet to lower cholesterol is usually the first step in cholesterol maintenance, before medicines are added.
People who have high cholesterol may be able to lower their cholesterol levels with these simple lifestyle changes:
Step 1) A study of 14,600 men and women ages 45 to 75, recently showed the participants’ total cholesterol declined as their number of meals per day increased. Those who ate five or six times a day had the lowest total cholesterol, on average approximately 5% lower, while the highest measurements were found among those who ate only one or two meals a day.
Step 2) 60 recent heart bypass surgery patients were divided into groups. The first group had no dietary restrictions, while the second and third group had one white or one red grapefruit each day. The second and third group had significantly lowered cholesterol levels while the no grapefruit group showed no reduction. But the red grapefruit group also had a reduction in their triglycerides. So step 2 is “Eat Red Grapefruit”, which will incidentally help with step 3 as well.
Step 3) One of the reasons your body produces Cholesterol is a self preservation tactic. Your arteries develop cracks and stress factures as a natural occurrence. Your body must patch these cracks and factures or you will bleed to death. The substance of choice for your body to use is Collagen. However, if the raw ingredients needed aren’t present in sufficient quantities to produce this miraculous elixir, cholesterol can also be used instead. So to keep your collagen production at its peak, rather than giving your liver a reason to produce additional cholesterol, give your body plenty of vitamin C (ascorbic acid).
Step 4) Did you know that the average person makes about 75% of their blood cholesterol in their own liver, while only about 25% is absorbed from food. So you should be able to further reduce your cholesterol with dietary changes. A low-fat diet with no trans-fats will lower your cholesterol anywhere from 8% to 20%. There are several very good low-fat diets – the Dash Diet, Mediterranean Diet, the South Beach Diet, Ultrametabolism Diet, and Weight Watchers Diet are all great diets to reduce your fat and trans-fat intake.
Step 5) The School of Medicine at Stanford University did a study consisting of 377 men and post-menopausal women, with high cholesterol. First they put them on a low-fat diet, and then had half of them to do aerobic exercise, and the other half did no form of exercise at all. After one year, the exercising group had significantly reduced their cholesterol levels – while the sedentary group showed no such reduction in their cholesterol. So the 5th step is to add aerobic exercise to your lifestyle.
If you’re worried about lowering your cholesterol level you’re not alone.
Follow these 5 steps, you should have your cholesterol to healthy levels as quickly as possible.
