Getting the balance of your cholesterol levels
right is absolutely critical, most of us are aware that if we have to high a
cholesterol level then that is bad for health, but also when our cholesterol
levels are too low then this can cause health concerns too.
Therefore, our goal
is to get balance between LDL and HDL cholesterol.
LDL which is more commonly known as a bad
cholesterol is the one that can cause health problems.
Although cholesterol is
needed by our bodies for proper functioning if we have too much of it it
creates a build up of plaque in the blood which ultimately clogs up your
arteries. Ultimately this blocking of your arteries can lead to heart attacks
and also if the plaque breaks off the artery walls it can form clots which
ultimately can lead to strokes as well.
If your LDL levels are too low then this will
effect your hormone and the cell functions, again this can also lead to an
increased risk of stroke and also a low serotonin level in you, which can lead
to mental health problems and there are very strong links between people
suffering from low cholesterol levels and having depression and feeling
suicidal.
The traditional treatments to balance out your
cholesterol levels is to use a statin, and in my opinion these drugs are handed
out just a little bit too freely because once you are on them you are on them
for life ( coincidentally statins are the most profitable drug made).
In
addition to that statins have quite a few nasty side effects as well, and
interestingly one of them being an increased risk of heart failure which is
something that you would have with high cholesterol anyway.
So what can you do to get your cholesterol
levels under control? One of the first things you can do is have a look at your
diet and cutting down the amount of saturated fat you are eating. You can do
this by cutting back on the amount of meat that you eat and also by reducing
your dairy intake as well. Increase the amount of oily fish that you eat and
also fruits and nuts as well; the oily fish in particular though because this
contains essential fats which will help raise the HDL cholesterol levels and
also thin the blood to prevent as much plaque building up.
However, diet plays a very small part in your
cholesterol levels, what we really need to do to achieve lower LDL is to make
sure that our HDL levels are high so that there is plenty of it to mop up the
LDL cholesterol and take it back to the liver for reprocessing and in addition
to that you want to make sure that what is not mopped up is excreted from the
body and not absorbed into the gastrointestinal tract.
There are several things that when combined
can actually do this First of all there is policosanol, this is extracted from
various sources including sugar, rice bran and beeswax and it reduces LDL and
raises HDL because of the alcohol it contains; this alcohol inhibits
cholesterol synthesis and also removes plaque from the arteries.
As well as
that there is rice bran oil and lecithin both of which convert cholesterol into
bile salts which in turn are excreted from the body.
These three things alone
will help you get your cholesterol levels balanced out to a certain degree
without being at the same risks by using statins.
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