A person with a high level of cholesterol is seriously at risk from stroke and heart disease and their mortality rate is significantly higher than the next person who has lower cholesterol. High cholesterol cause the walls of the arteries to be so clogged that blood is harder to pump and can't circulate properly. However, before you dismiss cholesterol altogether, you should know that cholesterol is not altogether a bad thing. It is an important substance for a couple of bodily functions like building the cell walls and producing the sex hormones. Produced by the liver, cholesterol is naturally present in animal products and is essential for the body. It is elevated cholesterol levels that one must be wary of and the proper thing to do when you find out that your cholesterol level is excessive is to strive to lower cholesterol levels as soon as you can.
Age, diet, gender, heredity, lack of physical activity and too much weight can all contribute to raised cholesterol levels. however, no matter what the cause, the first thing that will usually be recommended to you in in order to lower your cholesterol levels is a low-cholesterol diet.
Low-cholesterol diets have four basic components: eat less high-saturated fat food, eat less high-cholesterol food, eat food high in complex carbohydrates like fiber and starch and replace part of the saturated fat in your diet with unsaturated fat.
A low-cholesterol diet should not be hard to follow, especially with the variety of food available today. Also, a number of food manufacturers are now offering low-saturated fat, low-cholesterol food for those who have no time to fix full meals.
If you find, after strictly adhering to the diet for six months, your cholesterol level has not sufficiently decreased, your doctor may consider adding cholesterol-lowering medication to your diet. This is found to work more effectively when combined with low-cholesterol diet. They are meant to supplement - not replace - a low-saturated fat, low-cholesterol diet and there are several types. Your doctor will decide which type of medicine is right for you and he may prescribe more than one at a time because a combination of some medicines can be more effective. Of course, there are side effects, though they are usually not severe and are not very often experienced. Common side effects include diarrhea or constipation, flushing (the skin turns red and warm), and sleep problems.
Too much of something is bad and the flip side holds true too - lower cholesterol than normal is also a health risk. Recent studies have shown that abnormally low levels of cholesterol may be linked to anxiety and depression. A low cholesterol level (below 160 mg/dl) in a person shows that he is more likely to score high on measures of anxiety and depression than someone with normal cholesterol levels. Normal cholesterol levels fall within the 180 mg/dl to 200 mg/dl range and to achieve that you need to live healthily and, especially, watch your diet.
Sue Burchill writes about a number of health topics from a lay person's perspective. Visit her site to learn more about loweringcholesterolhelp.com/how-to-lower-your-cholesterol how to lower your cholesterol. Discover what is considered to be a healthy loweringcholesterolhelp.com/cholesterol-hdl-ratio cholesterol hdl ratio, as well as the different types of cholesterol, treatment for high cholesterol, what is a low cholesterol food, how your diet effects your cholesterol levels and much more.
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