Best Cholesterol Lowering Diet - Advice For The Best Cholesterol Lowering Diet

You cannot really talk about a certain cholesterol lowering diet to be the best. It depends very much on the metabolism of the patient but also on the response to certain treatments. For some, a simple diet combined with some daily exercise will do the trick, while for others, besides the daily exercise and the diet, some natural supplement or cholesterol lowering medication should be taken. The American Heart Association recommends a step-wise approach to lowering cholesterol levels.

The Step 1 Diet

The Step 1 Diet is the diet for you if you have high blood cholesterol and never tried other dietary approaches. The basic changes in your diet should look like this:

-the total fat intake should not be more than 30 percent of the total number of calories

-saturated fat intake should be less than 10 percent of calories

-8-10 percent should be the maximum intake of polyunsaturated fat

-The rest of the total fat intake should be made up by monounsaturated fat (like olive and canola oil)

-300 milligrams daily should be the maximum of cholesterol intake, and also the sodium level should be kept at a maximum of 2400 milligrams daily

The Step 2 Diet

If the Step 1 Diet has not shown the wanted improvement in lowering your cholesterol level, or you have heart disease you should try a more aggressive diet like the Step 2 Diet. It has mostly all the dietary conditions as the Step 1 Diet but it is more strict when it comes to the saturated fat and cholesterol intake:

-7 percent of calories should be the maximum saturated fat intake

-Cholesterol intake should be kept under 200 milligrams daily

-Calorie intake should be just enough to maintain a healthy body weight (you can talk to a nutritionist about this certain thing)

Low-Fat Diets

Patients who do not respond to the Step 1 Diet and the Step 2 Diet and do not want to take cholesterol-lowering drugs are recommended to try some very-low-fat diets. Practically, these diets eliminate eating most of the meats, added fats and dairy products and they usually contain about 28 to 26 percent of calories from fat.

Long-term, these diets can be very hard to follow. Because of their high carbohydrate content, these very-low-fat diets could raise blood triglyceride which raises the question if such drastic reductions in fat intake are necessary. Combining dietary approaches with stress reductions and exercise, and the Omish Program is an example of a very-low-fat diet program.

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