Cholesterol Levels in Food - Guaranteed Foods That Will Raise Your Cholesterol Readings

If you are one of the millions of Americans who are struggling to keep their cholesterol levels down, then it is essential for you to understand cholesterol levels in food: Which foods are guaranteed to raise your cholesterol as well as which have been shown to lower high cholesterol readings.

You see, while many doctors will immediately put their patients on statin medication as soon as they learn that their cholesterol levels are too high, in reality the most effective approach is to make certain changes to your diet that have been proven to work.

I even read an article recently about a doctor who experienced many negative side effects from statin drugs, so he dropped them in favor of a cholesterol lowering diet. Much to his delight, his cholesterol levels were actually reduced by more than what he was able to obtain using medication.

A high cholesterol food list will typically include eggs, dairy products and shellfish. While it will provide some benefit to avoid these foods in your diet, it has actually been shown that saturated fats have a much greater effect on cholesterol and triglyceride readings.

Most meats that contain high quantities of saturated fats such as pork and beef will also be on a high cholesterol food list. If you are really serious about reducing your high cholesterol, you will need to substantially decrease the amounts of these foods in your diet.

However, it is lower cholesterol food that will have the greatest benefit to your attempts at lowering high cholesterol. Most of these cholesterol lowering foods contains high amounts of dietary fiber as well as plant sterols, both of which have a substantial amount of research substantiating their ability to reduce lipid levels.

While most of us are familiar with the part fiber plays in our diet, but that is not true when it comes to plant sterols. Sterols are natural substances that are contained in all plants. the design of sterols is almost identical to the design of cholesterol which allows the sterols to compete with cholesterol for absorption into the body The result is that less cholesterol makes it into the bloodstream.

Understanding these details about cholesterol levels in food is a great place to begin for developing healthy cholesterol readings.

See also average blood pressure for women