How to lower your cholesterol?
When cholesterol levels dance up and down, it means that there is something wrong regarding your health. These levels can play a serious role in what we call a heart disease, no matter of its type. By lowering the cholesterol levels, you also lower the odds of developing a heart disease. The thing is, you have to take immediate action and protect your health by quitting some of the most harmful lifestyle habits and receiving the proper medication treatment, if necessary. In this article, we’ll introduce you to a series of effective tips that help you a lot with the improvement of the cholesterol levels, and helping you save your heart in the process!
First of all, ditch the bad lifestyle habits such as drinking alcohol or smoking. Smoking raises the chances of you getting a heart disease, in fact, it doubles them. Nonsmokers are more secured from this point of view. As we know, heart attack is a common cause for death, so if don’t have any plans on shortening your life, it’s probably the best choice to quit smoking now, while you still can.
Second, try to learn how to improve the cholesterol levels. There are some parameters that you need to take into consideration when it comes to this condition. For example, you should know that you are predisposed to developing a heart attack if you have the following values of cholesterol:
- Total cholesterol level is over 200
- HDL or the good cholesterol levels are under 40
- LDL or the bad cholesterol levels are over 160
- Triglycerides are over 150
Exercises and a healthy diet can considerably improve the cholesterol levels. As you may or may not know, a sedentary lifestyle is one of the main causes that favor the ups and downs of the cholesterol, and by getting fit and active, you ensure the lowering levels of the cholesterol and maintain a healthy and regular routine of activity. If you can’t do it by yourself, talk to your doctor about establishing the right kind of program for exercising, one that is based on your personal values for the cholesterol levels.
If you want to improve your lifestyle and keep under control the cholesterol levels, you also need a good and healthy diet for the heart. To be more precisely, you have to eat mostly foods that contain a low amount of fats and cholesterol. The recommended foods and aliments for a good control of the cholesterol are fruits and vegetables, followed by whole grains, nuts, beans, legumes or other plant-based foods you can cook. Fibers are excellent for the cholesterol, not to mention that eating natural foods will increase your vitamins levels as well. If you worry about eating fish, which we know is rich in fats, find out that you can still enjoy it, especially if it is tuna or salmon. Also, you can eat a lot of poultry and meat, only if you take measures with the size of your portions. Make sure to limit the sugar and the salt in your foods, because too much of these both can mess up with the cholesterol levels. Need extra advice for what to eat more and what to eat less? Read the following lines:
What to eat more?
- Healthy fats, for instance olive oil, flaxseeds, raw nuts and avocados, fish oil
- Fruits and vegetables rich in colors – fresh or frozen, either way they’re healthy
- Breads, pasta made only from whole grains or with legumes, high-fiber cereals
- Lots of proteins, such as poultry, lean meats or fish
- Eggs, skim, whole milk, unsweetened yogurt and any other organic dairy you like
What to eat less?
- Fats that come from the deep fried foods
- Saturated fats from the fast food
- Snack foods
- Packaged foods (pay attention to foods high in sodium and sugar)
- White breads, egg breads, refined pasta, refined rice, sugary cereals
- Bacon, fried chicken, salami, sausage, and other processed meats
- Processed cheese, yogurts that contain added sugars
A healthy weight is included in the effective tips for managing the cholesterol levels as well. Neither losing weight all of a sudden or putting on extra pounds in a short period of time doesn’t do good for the cholesterol.
Take control over your diabetes, get tested often and get treated for it.
Improve your stress and anger management, because emotions can screw up with our lifestyle and mess around with the cholesterol levels as well.
All of that being said, you can see that are plenty of efficient and effective tips that can save your heart’s health and help you lower the cholesterol levels, so that you won’t be at risk of developing a heart attack. Diet and exercising are the key factors into maintaining a healthy lifestyle and taking good care of our hearts and overall health. In a world full of choices and possibilities, make sure you take the right ones and the healthy ones for you!
Discussion about this post