Which foods should you eat/avoid in order to lower your cholesterol?

CharlieBeansmomTracey

sometimes though eating healthier and exercising doesnt always help especially if you have Familial hypercholesterolemia.I have this and have had it since I was in my mid 20 and I was in no way overweight then(am now) nor did I eat unhealthy. I have tried everything to lower mine and even with the diet they prescribed to me,and exercise it only went down a little. I was on statins but had to stop because most of them were causing me major health issues. The only one they did prescribe(zocor) was the only thing that did work and didnt give me issues. everyone is different so seeing the dr and trying a special diet for high cholesterol(provided by either the dr or a nutritionist) may help.There are no guarantees.I know people who are vegetarians and their cholesterol is high. I know people who eat nothing but junk and dont have an issue with cholesterol.all depends on the person Like I said.

tennisdude2004

neanderthin wrote: »

tennisdude2004 wrote: »

mabug01 wrote: »

Obviously from my post, I understand the importance of raising HDL because the things I suggested - beans, walking, fiber, etc., all help raise HDL. I never suggested anyone should not eat meat, I merely suggested that relying on meat at every meal may be problematic because you can get more benefit from foods with fiber in them like beans and legumes and vegetables. The poster wanted to know what her mum should add to her diet, and my opinion is add stuff to help with the HDL, and swap those calories from the meat category. Our difference of opinion seems to be that neanderthin believes meat will more effectively raise HDL and lower LDL than will fiber-rich foods, and I disagree, as do many studies, as well as my own experience.

I'm not sure anyone is suggesting saturated fat and low carb will reduce LDL particles because they won't.

What it will do is increase the size of them and this make them less dangerous

While true that saturated fat may not lower total LDL they do reduce the total amount of particles from LDL by increasing the volume of cholesterol found in individual LDL lipoproteins. Even though this might sound counterintuitive that more cholesterol might be a bad thing it's actually the direct reduction in the triglyceride content of the LDL lipoprotein....... basically we have a larger more buoyant particles delivering cholesterol, which is what it's suppose to do instead of dropping trig in the blood and oxidized cholesterol into foam cells, which is not what we want to happen, far from it. Basically the total LDL isn't reduced, and may go up slightly but we have fewer lipoproteins doing the same job, with fewer oxidized particles and less triglycerides, a no brainer. I think a lot of the misinformation has been saturated fatty acids in the blood, which is not a good thing, not good at all but totally different then dietary SFA. SFA's in the blood is due to carbohydrate metabolism and the conversion to triglycerides, so basically trig in the blood can be directly reduced by reducing carbohydrates, and to be more specific, ones high in sugars.

Blasphemy - how dare you blame sugar