Posted by: venom

In our current affluent lifestyle, elevated cholesterols levels is one of the most prevalent heatlh problems that we have. Cholesterol is actually an important ingredient in making our body work but elevated levels cause harm because the excess cholesterol clogs up our blood vessels - causing multiple problems like high blodd pressure, a higher risk of heart problems, etc. So what can we do to prevent all this? Our first line of defence against elevated cholesterol levels is to live a healthy cholesterol lifestyle. This mainly includes watching our diet and keeping to an exercise regime.

Your Diet

Keeping a healthy diet is an effective way of keeping our cholesterol levels in check. The main diet strategy is to reduce our daily fat intake. Fat directly increases cholesterol levels and weakens our overall health, which indirectly reducing our bodies’ ability to handle the access cholesterol. In order to do this, there three things in general that we can do:
1. Keep a conscious effort to reduce fat intake
2. Eat out less
3. Eat more fibre

Keep a tab of the content of the food we eat. Most food comes in packaging that informs the consumer about the content breakdown. Fat should make up less than a third of your total daily calorie intake. Also, most foods cooked at restaurants and cafes contain more fat as compared to home cooked food. This is because outside food typically focuses more on taste as compared to health. Although it is going to be difficult cutting down eating out totally, reducing the number of times we eat out should be good enough to maintain a healthy lifestyle. The third thing we can do is to eat more fibre - especially soluble fibre contained in foods like nuts and fruits. Soluble fibre helps prevent cholesterol from being absorbed by our digestive system.

An Exercise Regime

Besides keeping control of our diet, keeping a healthy exercise regime is also helpful because it increases good cholesterol levels to keep check on the bad cholesterols in your body. It also strengthens your body and tone your muscles. This indirectly helps you reduce cholesterol levels in your body as your body is more able to process and destroy the bad cholesterols. Note that keeping a healthy exercise regime does not mean having to exercise everyday in the gym or go for regular jogs in the park. Simple exercises like walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator; or walking to the post-office 5 minutes away instead of driving; helps in giving us a healthy lifestyle.

Others

By doing the above - i.e. having a healthy diet and keeping an execise regime - most of us should be able to fight unhealthy cholesterol levels. However, there are a percentage of the population that will need additional help in the form of cholesterol level reducing drugs. Drugs that contain Statins and Bile Acids help reduce our bodies’ cholesterol levels. If you need this extra help, go consult your family doctor.

Good luck!