Cholesterol

I am so pissed. I had my cholesterol checked early this year. My father's side has serious heart disease issues. My cholesterol was borderline high, the good cholesterol was good, the bad cholesterol was a little high, and triglycerides a little high.
I have not eaten meat since May. I had the tests repeated a couple of weeks ago and got the results- everything increased. A lot. The only dietary changes I have made is cutting out meat, eating more beans, and nuts now and then, tofu twice, and TVP a little bit. And changed from skim milk to light soymilk.
I am so pissed off. I went ahead and got the Rx for the cholesterol lowering med filled because I am at risk for a heart attack or stroke. My dad had a heart attack in his 30's and had coronary bypass surgery 6 years ago.
I know there is a hereditary component, but the last thing I expected was for it to go up so much since I stopped eating meat. I thought the worst would be it would stay about the same.

 

Only a vegan diet is cholesterol free. If you eat a lot of dairy you may still be eating a lot of cholesterol. Cheese & eggs have a lot of it in them.

I am sorry to hear you are having a cholesterol problem. I hope you get things straightened out.

 

Milk raises my blood sugar faster than anything, even pure sugar. So I imagine it does the same thing to cholesterol. I'm waiting for my numbers to come back from the doc. I just had them done for the first time since going veg. I have the bottle of meds sitting here but can't bring myself to take them. Hopefully I won't have the same experience you had. I'm really hoping the change in diet works. It is helping my blood sugar numbers tremendously and I lost 20 pounds without even trying. I hope it helps the other numbers. Now I just got to give up those lattes.

Kathi

 

I use egg beaters instead of real eggs. Aside from meat, I haven't made any significant dietary changes.

Kathi- tell me of this lose 20 lb without trying diet!

This was a fasting test and thankfully my blood sugar was normal, although the doctor had told me that one of the oral meds for diabetes has a side effect of weight loss.

 

http://askdrsears.com/html/4/T040800.asp#T040801
Here is a good site that might answer some of your questions

 

I decided to become veggie about 3 months ago becaue my doctor said my good cholesterol was too low. She wanted to put me on meds for it. I don't want to take any more meds so I decided to change my diet. I stopped all fast food and I gave up meat. I still eat eggs occasionally and I drink milk when I have a latte. Other than that I have not restricted my food intake in any way. The result 20 pounds in 3 months with no effort on my part. I love it.

Kathi

 

Do you consume enough omega-3? I have been reading that it helps with cholesterol. You could try eating more ground flax seeds and walnuts.

 

no- probably not enough seeds and nuts. I used to take EFA in fish oil before I stopped eating meat. But, my good cholesterol is good.

I could also eliminate the remaining animal sources- eggs and dairy. Maybe.

 

1. Eat less fat. Keep your total daily fat intake below 20 percent of your daily calories. If you average 2,250 calories a day, eat no more than 450 calories from fat, or 50 grams of fat (there are 9 calories per gram of fat).

2. Eat the right fats. Eat foods that are low in saturated fats, that contain mostly monounsaturated fats, and that are high in essential fatty acids. This means eating fats from seafood and plant sources. Minimize foods of animal origin, which are high in saturated fats. Keep your saturated fats to less than ten percent (better is seven percent) of your total daily calories.

Get used to checking the package label for grams of saturated fat per serving. Avoid "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated" oils and shortenings. New insights into the fatty food/heart disease correlation reveal that the amount of saturated fats and hydrogenated fats in a food may actually do more harm to the fats in your blood than the cholesterol in the food. The trans fatty acids in hydrogenated fats do all kinds of bad things to blood fats, such as: increase LDL (bad) cholesterol, decrease HDL (good) cholesterol, increase triglycerides, and increase lipoprotein A - the blood fat that contributes to plaques in the arteries. Look for labels that claim "contains no saturated fats" or "contains no hydrogenated oils."

Eat more fish that contain omega 3 fatty acids (coldwater fish: seabass, salmon and albacore tuna), which help lower blood fat levels and reduce the risk of blood clots, which can clog arteries and cause strokes and heart attacks. Replacing saturated fats in your diet with unsaturated ones (for example, vegetable and fish oils) can reduce blood LDL levels. Yet, a diet that is too high in polyunsaturated fat (more than 10 percent of daily calories) can suppress production of HDL. Choose monounsaturated fats instead, such as olive oil, canola oil, and nut oils. These monounsaturated fats do not lower HDL levels.

3. Cut cholesterol-containing foods. Too much cholesterol in the diet increases the number of LDLs, the bad cholesterol. As we said above, cholesterol is found only in animal products, not plant foods. Therefore, eating less animal foods and more plant foods will lower the blood cholesterol. While eating lean beef and peeling the skin off chicken reduces the cholesterol in these foods, there is still cholesterol and saturated fat within even lean meat and poultry. Organ meat (such as liver) is particularly loaded with cholesterol. (Making cholesterol is the liver's job.) Lean beef, lean lamb, and lean chicken are all about the same in the amount of cholesterol they contain. Egg yolks, milk fat, and shellfish (shrimp and lobster) are high in cholesterol. Other oily fish (such as salmon and tuna) are much lower in cholesterol. White-fleshed fish tend to be the lowest in saturated fat.

While your goal may be to raise the good cholesterol, you can't get "good cholesterol" directly from foods. If you already have a high cholesterol, temporarily switching to a vegetarian diet (with fish and non-fat dairy products, such as yogurt) may help lower your levels quickly. Persons who go on a vegetarian diet and reduce their fat intake by 26 percent have shown a significant drop in blood cholesterol levels in just six weeks. One study showed that switching from whole milk to nonfat milk lowered the total cholesterol of people in the study by seven percent and the LDL (bad) cholesterol by eleven percent after six weeks.

NUTRITIP:
Overweight Cholesterol

We think of fatty foods as the cause of high cholesterol, yet eating more calories than we need from any food (fats or carbohydrates) can raise blood cholesterol, since being overweight itself raises blood cholesterol and increases the risk for heart disease. So, controlling your intake of all foods is important in controlling your cholesterol.

4. Eat cholesterol-lowering foods. Besides avoiding cholesterol-containing foods, plant foods actually lower blood cholesterol. Plant foods have chemicals in them called sterols which, like cholesterol, hold the cell membranes together. By a fortunate biochemical quirk, plant sterols are not absorbed through the intestines and into the bloodstream, but they do decrease the absorption of sterols (cholesterol) in animal foods. The following are some plant foods that lower blood cholesterol.

* Soy protein. Switch from sirloin to soy. Replacing animal protein with soy protein reduces blood cholesterol levels, even when the total amount of fat in the diet remains the same. A recent review of 38 studies concluded that eating soy protein lowered blood cholesterol by an average of 32 milligrams (9 percent), LDL cholesterol by 22 milligrams (13 percent), and triglyceride (total fats) concentrations by ten percent. As an added perk, the HDL cholesterol increased a bit. Soy protein worked best in people who needed it most. While the amount of soy protein it takes to lower your cholesterol varies considerably among individuals, as a general guide, if half of your daily protein comes from soy (between 30 and 40 grams of soy protein a day), you should notice the cholesterol-lowering effect. This can be accomplished by simply changing from cow's milk to soy milk, meat to soy substitutes, or from dairy products to tofu. As an added health benefit, soy products contain phytonutrients called "isoflavones," which reduce the risk of some cancers.

* Fiber. Soluble fiber slows the absorption of the cholesterol from animal foods and acts as an intestinal broom to sweep the cholesterol out. Top-billing for research-backed, cholesterol-lowering effects of fiber goes to oatbran . Eating one to two ounces a day (30-60 grams) along with a lowfat, low cholesterol diet can reduce blood cholesterol by ten to fifteen percent. Similar benefits can be obtained from other soluble fiber-rich foods, such as beans, cruciferous vegetables, apricots, prunes, and a super-soluble fiber-rich food, psyllium, a bran-like grain which has been shown to lower cholesterol by fifteen percent within two to four months, after eating an average of ten grams (three tsp.) per day.

* Nuts. A recent study showed that volunteers who got 30 percent of their daily calories from fat, yet got two thirds of this fat from walnuts lower their cholesterol by twelve percent within four weeks. The cholesterol lowering effect of nuts was thought to be due to the combination of fiber, B- vitamins, and vitamin E, and to the fact that these fats are primarily unsaturated ones. Yet, don't go too nutty. Since nuts are high in fat, it's important not to eat too many.

* Garlic. The jury is still out on whether or not garlic will lower your cholesterol. Powdered garlic supplements probably will not. Eating one clove of garlic per day may. Watch the medical news for a garlic update. Until then, stick to the proven cholesterol-lowering foods, soy and fiber, and eat garlic because you enjoy it.

* Alcohol. You may also read that 1 to 2 alcoholic drinks a day can raise HDL cholesterol. Yet, similar to garlic, the jury is still out on whether the HDL-raising effect is significant enough to lower the risk of heart disease and to outweigh the potentially harmful effects of alcohol abuse.

NUTRITIP:
Read the Fine Print

While some foods boast "cholesterol-free" on the front of the package, the fine print on the back tells you they are full of saturated and fake fats. Highly saturated tropical oils, such as palm kernel oil, may have a worse effect on cholesterol levels than foods that contain cholesterol. Hydrogenated fats will also push cholesterol levels higher. Some cereals, for example, may be labeled "cholesterol-free" on the front of the package, yet if you read the fine print these contain hydrogenated tropical oils.

5. Get lean. Trimming excess body fat can increase the levels of good cholesterol (HDL). It is not only excess body fat that influences cholesterol levels, it's where you carry it. Studies show that men who carry excess fat around the middle (a body type we refer to as "apples") are at a higher risk of coronary artery disease than those who carry excess weight around the hips and buttocks ("pears"). Research has shown that apple-shaped people should pay even more attention to staying lean through a combination of exercise and a lowfat diet. Being over-fat increases LDL and decreases HDL, just the reverse of what you want, and this effect seems to be more aggravated in "apples" rather than "pears."

6. Exercise. Aerobic exercise (the kind that gets your heart rate up) raises the level of HDL cholesterol and may also reduce the level of LDL. In fact, since there is no such thing as eating foods high in HDL cholesterol, the only two ways you can raise HDL cholesterol is by exercising and reducing your body fat. Exercise is one of the few cholesterol-lowering activities that accomplish all three goals: lowering total cholesterol, raising HDLs, and lowering LDLs. Exercise stimulates the body to manufacture more HDL. The cholesterol level of athletes is much lower than that of sedentary individuals.

7. Relax. Stress releases stress hormones, such as adrenaline, which can elevate blood cholesterol levels. A daily relaxation program, such as meditation, deep-breathings or mental imagery can lower blood cholesterol.

8. Graze. Grazing on many mini meals throughout the day rather than eating three big meals can lower cholesterol. In studies comparing frequent snackers to three-meal-a-day eaters, the grazers had lower cholesterol.

9. Don't smoke. Smoking makes everything that's bad for the heart worse.

10. Raise low cholesterol kids. Children who grow up with a plant and seafood-based diet rather than one high in animal-based foods are more likely to grow up with healthier hearts.

 

Personally if it were me, I would cut them out if I had a cholesterol problem (though I already have for the most part so it is easy for me to say). Atleast doing it for a few months to see if it helps wouldn't hurt.

 

Yup, cheese. Mine went from healthy to STINKIN healthy when I gave up & dropped cheese from my diet.

Even at very very overweight, my cholesterol is good. And I blame diet for 100% of that!
love,
mom

 

asf

 

I don't think anyone mentioned green tea and I just read that it can help with cholesterol.


http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/TIP02069

Drink green tea daily. The antioxidants in green tea help lower cholesterol and prevent the cholesterol in your blood from oxidizing.

 

Well I got the labs back yesterday. The good cholesterol is back up where it should be. The bad stuff is still down. The overall numbers are good. The only thing that is still high is triglycerides. And that is lower than it was before. I don't know what to do about that except to cut out butter now. Butter, cheese, and an occasional egg are the only animal products I still consume.

Kathi