Many people worry about high cholesterol. Their doctors tell them that they have to lower their blood-cholesterol levels. This is for good reason because continuously high levels can lead to clogging of the arteries (atherosclerosis) and heart attacks. Heart disease remains the number one killer in the United States as well as many other developed countries. It’s ironic because we do know its causes and prevention is easy, but it persists.

By eating nutritious low or no cholesterol foods a person can lower his/her cholesterol. You can do this by improving your ability to recognize high cholesterol foods. Let’s start by defining cholesterol: it is a necessary fat that can be manufactured by many body cells, but the liver produces most of it. On a daily basis, the body produces enough cholesterol for its needs. The problem comes in when you eat too much high-cholesterol-producing food.

This can be called dietary cholesterol. It comes from animal sources; plants do not produce it. So it would seem that the first rule in identification would be to consider whether what you are about to eat comes from an animal. This would be true if it weren’t for the fact that the liver uses saturated fat to produce cholesterol and the majority of it comes from this form of fat.

Egg yolks contain a high level of cholesterol. In the recent past we were warned to eat only one or two eggs a week. Recently scientists have found that eating pure cholesterol doesn’t seem to affect a person’s blood cholesterol as much as originally thought. So egg lovers can safely go back to eating omelets - in moderation of course.

However, saturated fat is the real culprit. So the question of greatest concern when eating omelets is: what kind of fat were the eggs fried in? So if you fry using lard (an animal fat) or some other animal-saturated fat, the food will be tainted by this fat and consuming it will raise your cholesterol levels.
Vegetable oils are more forgiving, but palm or coconut oils are as high in saturated fat as the animal fats. As a general rule, when a cooking fat is solid at room temperature - it is no good for your heart.
Another thing that makes fats more forgiving is ’synergism’. This can be explained by considering a food as having many components, some good and some bad, but when placed together the impact of the bad component is diminished.

For example, if you pick any vegetable oil say olive oil it does contain saturated fats, but it also contains polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. Somehow mixing these three fats together makes the saturated fat component much less threatening to your heart. There is an interaction between these fats that creates an overall healthy, nutritious oil. This kind of interaction happens often in nature and has yet to be adequately explained by food scientists. Maybe eating an egg yolk, which would appear dangerously high in cholesterol, is mediated by some other component or components in the yolk or white of the egg?

So foods high in saturated fats are the problem. Meat and dairy foods can come with high concentrations of saturated fat; trim visible fat off of meats.

One of the biggest threats today comes from trans fats. Food scientists have grouped trans fats along with saturated fats into ‘Bad Fats’. Trans fats can be man made by heating oil in the presence of hydrogen thus creating a partially-hydrogenated oil. They are used in deep-fat frying of French fries, onion rings, etc. Also used in baking off-the-shelf cupcakes, donuts, cookies, etc.

To learn more about trans fats and heart-healthy foods visit:

http://www.foodsthatlowercholesterol.info

About the Author:
Tim Lazaro is a nutrition scholar and competitive, masters runner who writes on issues related to heart health, natural-food diets, and aerobic exercise. By employing the diets and life-style changes that he writes about, he has lowered his total cholesterol and lost weight.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tim_Lazaro

Cholesterol is a fatty plaque like substance produced by the liver to maintain healthy cells, insulate nerves and produce hormones, and even helps your body to digest fat.

There is both good and bad cholesterol which means that it is important to understand and be able to make a distinction between each type, and knows how it affects your health.

Equally important is to know the ways and means to control your blood cholesterol level should it be required.

One thing you should know is that cholesterol is not measured depending on your body weight. However, if your body weight is over the normal levels you may be at risk if you have a high bad cholesterol levels

In order to control cholesterol you need to know what the correct levels are for you. You should have at first: a minimum of 40mg/dL or more for the good cholesterol and bad cholesterol should not be over 200mg/dL.

The two kind of cholesterol are (HDL) “high-density liproteins” and (LDL) ” low-density lipoproteins” often known as the bad type of cholesterol because they are guilty of depositing a build-up of cholesterol plaque in the arteries and restricting blood to the heart

One the other hand, (HDL) “high-density liproteins” carries cholesterol away from the cells and back to the liver, where it’s either broken down or excreted. The higher the (HDL) “high-density liproteins” amount, the better

If you have high cholesterol, you would be at greater risk of suffering from heart attacks, heart diseases as well as from strokes. It thus makes it worthwhile to make an effort to maintain proper cholesterol levels, so that you are less at risk with regard to your overall health.

Today’s normal diet can contributes to problems with high cholesterol. Your body makes all the cholesterol it needs in your liver. The cholesterol you don’t need comes from your food intake

Knowing your cholesterol level will help you decide what kind of diet plan you should follow and if you need medication and treatment already. If you know your exact cholesterol status then you can also do something to combat it by learning to quit cigarette smoking and excessive eating of high cholesterol foods.

Smoking and obesity may result in low level of HDL. In order to increase and maintain a perfect HDL level, one should strictly avoid tobacco smoking, and maintain healthy diet and practice exercise on regular basis.

Monitoring your weight is one of the best ways to combat high levels of cholesterol. If you think you are overweight for your age and height, then you should be contemplating on slimming down to be able to decrease your high cholesterol level

Experts believe that if your overall cholesterol level is below 200mg/dl than you have a healthy cholesterol level and are considered to be at low risk for acquiring heart disease.

It is difficult for people to achieve a healthy cholesterol level or keep an acceptable cholesterol level if they eat an unhealthy diet loaded with saturated fats or if they do not get enough exercise.

Author Brian J Worley
To find more information on controlling your cholesterol level visit the Cholesterol guide:

http://www.go-to1.com/cholesterol

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brian_Worley