increase of cholesteral to high risk category need strategy to decrease in 2 mos.
any sure fire methods out there besides oatmeal...thinking more supplements thatof course are safe??
Thanks in advance
C
Could you consider a diet with low/no animal products? A vegan diet is completely free of cholesterol-- the only dietary sources are meat, eggs, milk, cheese, butter, etc.
yumm I luv kale too!
hmm vegan, Ive managed to eat an almost free of meat diet for most of my life. And my preference for protein has always been tofu or beans. Ive never cut the fats however, butter, cheese, (last time I had milk in liquid form was from my mother, that wont be a concern) Ive cut wheat before to excellent results, but Ive never outlawed all my fellow animals..
Send a vegan menu site? Ill try it for 2 mos. It certainly cant hurt and Im aware of maintaining nutrition throughout so why the hell not.
My utmost thanks.
Butter is pretty easy to replace- you can use olive oil for cooking, and margarine for toast and things. Since you have health concerns, be sure to stay away from hydrogenated margarine. EarthBalance is a great brand. Cheese is tougher to substitute, but you can make it 2 months without, I promise!
Be careful with vitamins also-- be sure to take a B-vitamin supplement (the only dietary source of B-12 is animals), and you might need calcium and iron as well, depending on your other food intake.
I'm no doctor, but a diet full of fruits and vegetables and whole grains (brown rice, quinoa, spelt, whole wheat, even potatoes) is your best bet in my opinion.
These sites are all great sources of recipes:
Hope this helps- and I sincerely hope you can improve your health and wow the socks off of your doctor!
I have pretty high cholestorel (sp?) and my nutritionist gave me omega 3 fish oil and told me to take a 1.5 tsps a day. I'm not sure if it's been lowered yet, haven't been back to check, but my nutritionist said its been very effective to a lot of her patients!
The other thing is, yes, you could do a vegan diet but be INCREDIBLY careful about consuming hydrogenated/partially hyrdrogenated oil which can be found in a lot of processed products that are vegan (some peanut butters, crackers, breads, etc) because it increases LDL (bad cholestorel) and decreases HDL (good cholestorel.)
Good luck!
Thanks LovesKale! Thanks Laren99!
What truly concerns me is that Ive had a very healthy diet steared clear of all junk my entire life...Ive just read that french press coffee increases ldl...wow Ive had that at a rate of 4 cups per day since the last (perfect) blood test...hmmm...yes, omega3 --thats is also something ive just read and will implement vitamins have always been an area of concern , Ive never known what the actual intake values for A are--if anyone has a rda vs whats really needed send it my way!
Im totally doing this to impress my doc hahaha :-)
Almost all cholesterol in our bodies is made by our livers, we don't absorb very much at all from eggs etc. even though they contain a lot.
So cutting out dietary cholesterol doesn't really have an impact, cutting way down on dietary fat however does.
Replace red meat with lean white meat and oily fish cut out full fat dairy. Replace fats where they are needed with varieties that unsaturated, such as low fat mono- or poly-unsaturated spreads, and vegetable, olive or sunflower oil. You should also eat at least five portions of a variety of different fruit and vegetables each day. Plant statins have increasing backing for reducing LDL.
Hey, just a thought, did you actually fast before blood for your lipid panel was drawn? some people think if they just eat a little it's ok, but it can affect your results, and if you had a recent "normal" test and you ate before this one then that could be part of it. But one thing to know is that of our total cholesterol only 25% is from diet (on average, some people more, usually less though) so with a strict diet alone you can only hope to decrease it by 25% of whatever your total is because the rest is made my our body... if that doesn't bring you into a healthy range then the omega-3 supplements (they have prescription now too, depending on how good your insurance coverage is if you have insurance...) and/or another medication might be considered down the line...
It's great you want to try on your own though! Just make sure this is something you can maintain... b/c if you get your cholesterol down by eating vegan but then a few months down the road decide you can't keep it up, your cholesterol will just go up
good luck!
Dietary choices are one factor but there are others. It's also a function of being overweight, smoking, drinking alcohol and being inactive. So if any of those are applicable you can maybe look there. If you're inactive, for example, a daily exercise programme would make a lot of sense. If you're overweight, you can lose quite a lot in 2 months.
If however, you're not overweight/inactive/a smoker/a drinker, you cut out the full-fat dairy products from your diet, eat more vegetables/more wholegrains and your cholesterol levels are still high it could be that you have a genetic predisposition... that's always a possibility. Best of luck
Original Post by vwiggins:
Almost all cholesterol in our bodies is made by our livers, we don't absorb very much at all from eggs etc. even though they contain a lot.
So cutting out dietary cholesterol doesn't really have an impact, cutting way down on dietary fat however does.
Replace red meat with lean white meat and oily fish cut out full fat dairy. Replace fats where they are needed with varieties that unsaturated, such as low fat mono- or poly-unsaturated spreads, and vegetable, olive or sunflower oil. You should also eat at least five portions of a variety of different fruit and vegetables each day. Plant statins have increasing backing for reducing LDL.
Do you have a source for this? A lot of people decrease their cholesterol by cutting it from their diets. See, for example, the Austin, TX fire department:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/national/26 vegan.html?_r=1
28 days on a vegan diet dropped this guy's cholesterol from 344 to below 200.
There's a difference between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol. Some foods contain a lot of dietary cholesterol - for example, shellfish, offals, egg yolks. But they don't impact on blood cholesterol as badly as foods that contain a lot of animal fats..... i.e. meat and full-fat dairy products. These links explain it quite nicely.
http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/healthissues/health yheart/cholesterol/
http://www.bhf.org.uk/keeping_your_heart_heal thy/preventing_heart_disease/cholesterol.aspx
So if someone is getting a balanced diet with a very low level of fat from meat and dairy products they can enjoy high-cholesterol foods such as shellfish, offals and whole eggs without it causing their blood cholesterol to be raised. Obviously a 100% vegan diet includes a lot of plant roughage & eliminates animal fats and cholesterol at the same time but it's an extreme route that not everyone would be happy to take.
Original Post by vwiggins:So cutting out dietary cholesterol doesn't really have an impact, cutting way down on dietary fat however does.
This study found that people who dramatically increased their dietary fat saw much greater improvements in their cholesterol levels than people who ate a low fat diet.
Original Post by gi-jane:http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/healthissues/health yheart/cholesterol/
http://www.bhf.org.uk/keeping_your_heart_heal thy/preventing_heart_disease/cholesterol.aspx
Did you notice that neither of these links offered any evidence to back up the 'saturated fat causes high cholesterol' argument? I'd love to see some of the studies they used to back up this claim.
The two links are to the British Heart Foundation and the Food Standards Agency. They're pretty respected bodies (in the UK at any rate). I'm willing to take what they say as sensible well-researched advice.
The people in the study you mention lost weight and they would have done so with any reduced calorie diet, regardless of how it was comprised. As previously pointed out, excess weight is a principle factor in high blood cholesterol levels.
Original Post by gi-jane:
The two links are to the British Heart Foundation and the Food Standards Agency. They're pretty respected bodies (in the UK at any rate). I'm willing to take what they say as sensible well-researched advice.
If their advice is sensible and well researched, then it should be pretty easy to find some research supporting it. I've poked around on both of those websites and I can't find a single study, or mention of a study that links dietary fat (saturated or otherwise) with any heart condition.
But I did find a study by the womens health initiative which tracked almost 50,000 women for 8 years and didn't find any evidence to link a high fat diet to heart or cardio-vascular disease.
Interestingly, the study about the women's health initiative is now believed to be rather flawed. The participants did not keep accurate enough records of their food consumption and, owing to the prevailing messages about fat in the diet at the time, it's likely that most were influenced by that when making their food choices.
This page on the FSA website suggests you can order quite a lot of paperwork on the National Diet and Nutrition Survey... http://www.food.gov.uk/science/dietarysurveys /ndnsdocuments/ and here
http://www.food.gov.uk/science/research/resea rchinfo/nutritionresearch/dietandcardiovasc/
So do you eat just butter, cheese and meat? Do you follow the recommendations from that study yourself?
Excellent discourse everyone, and while I make no claims, I am however baffled by my 248 cholesterol thus putting me in major risk category...within 2 yrs of having an excellent review. I do not have any family history. I was an occasional smoker and the occasional wine did pass my parched pale lips...I live in NY so I walk all the time and for what feels like forevah...I am in my late 30s with 145lbs and I know I am 15lbs over...which I will drop at the end of all this Im sure,
So, here's where Ive found myself today, Ive thought about what Ive done this past 2 yrs on routine...and french press coffee 4 cups a day may be the exhilirating culprit. Ive read that tthe cafelora (or whatevah) puts 6-7% bad ch on the record...well to go from 200 lets say to 248 in 2yrs...??you tell me?
Ive researched the Omega fish oil cosmos...and Ive droppeda hefty sum on the 60 day supply. Ive removed all animal products and have loaded the kitchen with dried fruits and nuts, lentils, and organic brown rice....I shop daily for fruits and veggies and will return to my habit of having live foods with every meal ...Im fortunate to be able to have fresh low cost produce a stones throw away and I take advantage of it let me tell you! The only behavior outside of an extraordinarily healthy diet(for a lifetime I might add...no soda no junk) is that I never curtail the fats. All my dairy is full fats, nothing low-fat. and yes, butter. But all in moderation and with a diverse and healthy diet..
earleyma...if my diet change effects my cholesterol I will be very pleased to have found a solution without drugs, and will not have as much difficulty as most in maintaining what works..like I said I dont have any bad habits...my fear is there may be another reason for this hike -the liver bits that have been discussed anyone? I would certainly like to hear more...fats?what about lecithin or other bile producing agents?
Thanks everyone I so appreciate every word on this matter. loveskale...Im off to read that nytimes article now, thanks!
C
Original Post by gi-jane:This page on the FSA website suggests you can order quite a lot of paperwork on the National Diet and Nutrition Survey... http://www.food.gov.uk/science/dietarysurveys /ndnsdocuments/ and here The study results are right there on the website, I looked over the most recent results and the study uses similar methods as the womens health initiavitve study (self reporting) that you've dismissed as being rather flawed. This study also doesn't draw any conclusions about the effects of dietary fat on cholesterol levels
http://www.food.gov.uk/science/research/resea rchinfo/nutritionresearch/dietandcardiovasc/
Some of the studies here seem to be kind of sort of relevant. Like this one that found replacing satuated fats in the diet with unsaturated fats lead to a decrease in LDL cholesterol, but also lead to a decrease in HDL which lead to no net improvements in cholesterol ratios.
So do you eat just butter, cheese and meat? Do you follow the recommendations from that study yourself?
Butter, cheese, meat, fish, veggies, eggs, whole grains, dairy (some low fat, some full fat), etc.
Recommendations from what study? Did the womens health initiative make recommendations?
