Dieting to Lower Cholesterol

Most people consider beginning a low cholesterol diet in an effort to ensure or improve their heart health. This enables them to lower their likelihood of heart disease and stroke. While there are several medications that can be used to lower and maintain blood cholesterol level, lifestyle changes are an excellent way to maintain cholesterol levels naturally. Maintaining a healthy weight through diet and exercise is key, but there are many diet choices that specifically focus on food choices to avoid the culprits that lead to high cholesterol.

Top Foods/Food Sources to Avoid

• Foods with excessive salt and sugar
• High cholesterol foods like fatty meats and organ meat
• Trans fat that is often found in baked goods, fried foods, margarine, and snack foods
• Saturated fats from animal products
• Processed foods and meats since they are higher in sodium and saturated fat

Best Foods to Eat While Maintaining Cholesterol

• Fiber and whole grain. This includes replacing white bread with whole grain bread, replacing white rice with brown rice and eating more oatmeal. It is also important to eat a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, which are good sources of fiber.
• Low-fat or fat-free dairy products
• Fish- Fish are a good source of omega-3 healthy fat and are low in saturated fat.
• Meat prepared by grilling or broiling rather than by frying or breading.
• White meats and lean cuts of meat (as opposed to red meats or darker meats like duck). Lean, white meat is lower in fat.

Reasons Research will Help With Diet

Successful diets are ones that can be maintained for the long haul. The more informed the dieter is about how cholesterol affects the body and how different foods influence their heart health, the easier it will be for them to make good food choices on a regular basis. This ensures that not only with the dieter lower their cholesterol levels, but they will be able to maintain them for a long, healthy life.

Top 5 Routes for "Cholesterol Diet"

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The CDC has a wealth of information on their website that will help visitors to understand heart disease and how high cholesterol influences disease risk. There are also a number of articles directed at helping visitors to understand how to live a healthy lifestyle to lower cholesterol. This is a good source to help with understanding what foods lead to high cholesterol and why.
2. American Heart Association The American Heart Association's mission is to fight heart disease by providing public health education. Their comprehensive website has several interactive tools designed to help the user form a plan for a healthy lifestyle. They have a resource page, which includes tips and tricks for preparing food to lower the cholesterol in it, including heart healthy replacements for traditional ingredients.
3. Webmd Webmd provides health information and tools, which can be searched based on topic (such as cholesterol). Their site includes articles, expert commentary, quizzes, videos, and slideshows among other tools to explain health and diet in easy to understand language. There are resources on their site for diets specifically targeted at lowering cholesterol and hypertension.
4. Mayo Clinic The Mayo Clinic website includes resources from doctors and researchers to help people in their health care journey. The website includes information on low cholesterol foods as well as the information to inform diet choices.
5. EatingWell Website While websites with general health information are a valuable resource, a website that specifically focuses on diet is useful for detailed diet information for low cholesterol choices. Some people might find that they do best with a detailed diet plan that spells out their meals for them. On eatingwell.com users can search for diets specifically focused on low cholesterol and receive multiple meal plan options that help take the guesswork out of food choices.