Controlling Your Cholesterol with Diet

Statin drugs that lower cholesterol are commonly prescribed.

While they are normally safe, they can cause side-effects such as liver damage, diarrhea, and muscle pain in up to 10% of users.  These drugs are also expensive and must be taken throughout the patient's life.

These means that statins should only be prescribed when cholesterol is high enough to cause heart disease or when other risk factors are also present.

The statins may be useful in some cases, but many people can actually lower their cholesterol by simply changing their diet and exercising.

There are many foods that help lower cholesterol.

Try to keep your saturated fat intake down to 10% of your total caloric intake.  These are foods such as butter and meats.  Be careful not to go "low-fat".  This can also reduce your good cholesterol along with the bad.

You will need to eat foods that keep the body from absorbing the fat you do eat and thus, it is flushed from the body.

These functional foods include foods rich in soluble fiber such as fruit, grains and legumes.  The fiber dissolves and forms into a gel inside the intestines which grabs the cholesterol molecules and stops them from being absorbed.  You can lower your cholesterol by as much as 8% by simply eating more fiber.

Foods that are high in fiber include: fish, fish oil supplements, oat bran, psyllium, and rice bran.

Vitamin C, vitamin E, niacin and certain antioxidants can reduce the risk of heart attack by reducing oxidation, thus the bad (LDL) cholesterol can't adhere to the walls of the arteries.

Exercise raises your good (HDL) cholesterol.  Walking and weight training are excellent choices.

And, as bad as you like to hear it, losing weight can reduce your cholesterol by approximately 5% for each 5-10 pounds of weight you lose.

If you still need to take a statin to keep your cholesterol down, you may need a lower dosage with a lower risk of side-effects.