Cholesterol information that you will find out here: total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, causes, and symptoms of high cholesterol!?
These are the questions that you’ll find answered here. The complete cholesterol information guide – to help you easily and quickly get to the “heart” of cholesterol and how it affects you.
What is cholesterol?
In simple language cholesterol is a fat that circulates in the blood. The body needs cholesterol since it is a building material for body cells. If you want to have an idea of its form – it is a fatty, soft, waxy substance resembling hardened grease and it occurs in the bloodstream.
Now, cholesterol is not bad in itself. For one thing it is the raw material to make sex hormones – not bad to have after all.
However, high cholesterol levels can slowly clog arteries resulting in heart disease or stroke. This clogging of arteries takes years to become life threatening, but can also be reversed using nutritional supplements, exercise and a proper diet.
Other “cholesterol terminology” you should know, apart from cholesterol are LDL and HDL.
LDL & HDL Cholesterol – What’s the Difference?
(Low Density Lipoprotein) LDL Cholesterol, is called the bad cholesterol, because it causes the build up and plaque inside blood levels. Remember that LDL is the cholesterol to lower.
HDL cholesterol is the good cholesterol, because it actually removes the cholesterol from blood vessels’ walls. HDL is the cholesterol to increase by as much as you can.
Where does cholesterol come from?
While there are various causes of high cholesterol, cholesterol as such comes from 2 sources:
– your body; and
– the foods you eat.
In your body, cholesterol is made in the liver. And do you know that your liver makes all the cholesterol your body needs!? That’s why you don’t really need the cholesterol coming from the second source – foods that you eat.
Whatever food you eat the liver will take from it the necessary ingredients to produce cholesterol.
As a rule of thumb all animal and dairy products contain high cholesterol.
However vegetables contain none of it. As such one way to lower cholesterol is to avoid foods that contain high cholesterol – or at least minimize their consumption, that is animal and dairy products.
Why lower cholesterol?
The problem with cholesterol is that there are no high cholesterol symptoms and too much of it can collect in your blood vessels, forming a hard, britle substance called plaque.
A build up of plaque can cause your blood vessels to narrow and, reducing the amount of blood that can flow to vital organs such as your heart and brain.
If a vessel is blocked and the blood does not pump through the heart, then you’ll have a heart attack. However, if the blocked vessel, is near to the brain and the blood does not flow to your brain you’ll have a stroke. Lowering cholesterol will slow fatty build up in the walls of the arteries and reduce your risk of a heart attack and stroke.
In fact studies have shown that by lowering cholesterol by 1 percent, there’s a 2 percent reduction in the number of heart attacks. In other words, if you reduce cholesterol level by 20 percent, your risk of heart disease could drop by 40 percent.
How to lower cholesterol?
There are various ways to lower cholesterol naturally. Some require some form of self-discipline, some do not.
First, watch your diet. Limit the intake of animal and dairy products. Various studies have shown that dietary modifications can reduce cholesterol by 15 to 30 percent.
Second, stop (or at least limit as much as you can) smoking or drinking alcohol. Stop anything else that is harmful to your body.
Third, begin an aerobic exercise program. It does not have to be heavy. Something like a brisk walking or jogging.
Forth, use nutritional supplements. There are various supplements that help reduce cholesterol. For example you can use a soluble fiber supplement such as green barley, or garlic, calcium, lecithin, vitamin B and C.
However, there are quite a number of supplements that have been clinically proven to lower cholesterol.
Artin Vaqari
Founder
all-about-lowering-cholesterol.com.
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