14 Cholesterol Healthy Foods To Consider For Excellent Cholesterol Levels And Fantastic Heart Health

Everyone should have their cholesterol checked, regardless of whether you are young, old, male, female, thin or overweight. Sadly, heart disease can affect anyone at any age. With such a strong link between cholesterol and heart disease, managing cholesterol is essential, and one way to do that is through eating cholesterol healthy foods, amongst other things.

Before we go through the list of cholesterol healthy foods, let's just briefly explain why managing cholesterol is so important. While cholesterol is needed by the body for hormone balancing, creating vitamin D and building cell membranes and maintaining them, high levels of it can lead to heart disease.

The two types of cholesterol that need to be kept in check are LDL (bad) and HDL (good). High levels of LDL cholesterol causes blockages in your arteries, resulting in the blood flow to your brain and heart becoming restricted, which causes you to have a stroke or heart attack.

Low HDL cholesterol impairs your vital cell function and hormone function. HDL also removes LDL cholesterol from your arteries, so high levels of it are required.

Diet is the main factor that affects both LDL and HDL cholesterol levels. Eating the wrong foods will negatively impact both LDL and HDL. This is why knowing which foods are bad for you and what the cholesterol healthy foods are, is necessary, if you are to get great cholesterol levels and excellent heart health.

Let's take a look at 14 cholesterol healthy foods you should add to your diet:

Blueberries
Whole Grains
Almonds
Pistachios
Walnuts
Olive Oil
Avocados
Olives
Cranberry-Grape Juice
Flaxseed Oil
Black Soybeans
Yogurt with probiotics
Pomegranate Juice
Fish and Fish Oil

Consuming the above cholesterol healthy foods will achieve the following:

Lower LDL cholesterol
Increase HDL cholesterol
Slow the progression in artery wall thickness
Reverse the arterial damage caused by saturated fats
Protect against heart disease and diabetes
Lower blood pressure
Reduce plaque build up which causes heart attacks and strokes
Prevent re-absorption of cholesterol back into your bloodstream

One thing to note here, prescription cholesterol medications, like statins, cannot achieve the above. They can lower LDL cholesterol alright, but that is about it, and not without some serious side effects, which range from rashes, dizziness and irritability to depression, liver damage and increased risk of heart failure.

As well as including some, or all, of the above cholesterol healthy foods in your diet, add some exercise to your daily/weekly routine. This will really enhance your HDL cholesterol levels.

One last thing worth considering - a natural cholesterol supplement. Choose one with natural ingredients like theaflavins, phytosterols, lecithin, D-limonene and policosanol, as these achieve outstanding results, lowering LDL and triglycerides and raising HDL. They will compliment your diet and help you achieve your goals much quicker.

If you are ready to manage your cholesterol levels and achieve fantastic heart health, then visit my website today, where I share, what I personally successfully used, and continue to use, for excellent cholesterol levels and super heart health.

Mary Ruddy is a strong advocate of natural and safe health care and enjoys nothing more than helping others make a positive impact on their lives. To find out more about how you too can improve your health naturally visit her website today at curing-cholesterol.com curing-cholesterol.com/

Visit her site curing-cholesterol.com curing-cholesterol.com/ to learn the natural and safe way for lowering high cholesterol and raising good cholesterol.