Lower Cholesterol Through Diet
You Don’t Have to Be a Geek to Lower Cholesterol Through Diet
Guest post by Deborah H Land of CholesterolLoweringDiets.net
a. Cholesterol Myths – both Good and Bad
There are actually two types of cholesterol, which is not a known fact for people who misconstrue it as something bad. HDL is the name of the good cholesterol, while the bad one is called LDL. A bloodstream with too much LDL will result in plaques in the arteries. Over time, blood will have a difficult time travelling your arteries because the opening becomes narrow thanks to the amount of bad cholesterol in it. Read more
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Cutting Back on Added Sugars
by Shereen Jegtvig
This week the American Heart Association released new guidelines on how much added sugar is acceptable in a healthy diet. Added sugars include sweeteners such as table sugar, honey and high fructose corn syrup that are either added during the production of foods or at the table. In general, the guidelines suggest no more than about 150 calories per day (based on your daily calorie need) come from added sugar. That’s approximately the same as 6 teaspoons of table sugar.
This may be less than many Americans are consuming each day. In fact, one 12 ounce can of soda might exceed your limit – and just imagine how much sugar is in a giant super-sized soda. It’s important to watch your sugar intake because eating too much sugar can easily cause you to take in more calories than you are able to burn each day. That leads to being overweight, then obese and increases your chances of having high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Another consideration is that added sugar really has no additional nutritional benefit – nothing but simple carbohydrate calories that are easy to absorb and your body has no trouble converting the extra energy to fat. Read more
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Partially Hydrogenated Fats and Trans-Fats
by Shereen Jegtvig
When you look on the ingredients lists of your packaged foods, you may see ‘partially hydrogenated oil’ lurking there. Hydrogenation involves forcing hydrogen molecules into the polyunsaturated fat molecules of liquid oil. The addition of the hydrogen molecules changes the chemical structure of the fats and turns the liquid oil into a more solid shape (think about stick margarine). These fats are called trans-fats.
That’s a bad thing because partially trans-fats are worse for you than saturated fats. Trans fats raise LDL cholesterol (the bad kind), which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Eating too many of these artificially created trans-fats clogs your arteries and increases inflammation.
It’s so bad, that food manufacturers are required by the United States Food and Drug Administration to indicate how many grams of trans-fat are contained in each serving of their products. And New York City has banned the use of trans-fats in local restaurants. Read more
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Vitamin D: The Sunshine Vitamin
Mother nature gave us the ability to form Vitamin D simply by sitting in the sun. It’s the only vitamin that is made in our body without us consuming anything, and this is great news for those of us who live in sunny climates, or spend a lot of time outdoors and so can easily obtain enough sunlight most days.
However, as more Americans are lathering on the sun screen and spending more time indoors, their Vitamin D levels lowering, which in turn is resulting in a growing health problem. Additionally, as we turn to soft drinks and juices to quench our thirst we are drinking less and less milk, which is good source of Vitamin D.
Recent studies have showed that between 50 and 75 percent of Americans have less than optimal levels of Vitamin D, this is concerning because low levels of the sunshine vitamin can raise the risk of weak bones and, possibly, heart disease. In fact, worryingly, America is seeing a return of rickets – a disease caused by lack of Vitamin D. The figures show that 7 out of 10 of American children have too-low levels of Vitamin D putting them at huge risk of developing rickets. Read more
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