One of the most common health conditions in senior adults is high levels of bad cholesterol, which leads to heart disease and stroke. But before we get into ways of keeping cholesterol in check and calculating how much cholesterol per day for a woman or man respectively is okay, let’s first understand what cholesterol is.
What is cholesterol?
Cholesterol is a waxy, fatty substance in your blood that helps digest food and make necessary hormones, new tissue cells, and vitamin D. For your daily cholesterol intake, almost all the cholesterol you need is made in-house, inside your body. Other, extra cholesterol comes from eating foods made of animal products, such as meat, eggs, and dairy.
It’s All Greek to Me
Chole = bile, a liquid produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder until needed.
Stereos = solid, identifying cholesterol as a solid product.
What is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol?
Cholesterol is classified as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The good kind, high-density lipoprotein or HDL, is produced in your liver and to a smaller extent in your intestines. The bad kind, low-density lipoprotein or LDL, comes mostly from external sources, i.e. the food you eat.
How does cholesterol work?
HDL or good cholesterol swims around your body in your blood stream, capturing particles of bad cholesterol. HDL takes these particles back to the liver, which flushes them out of your system.
If there is too much LDL in your body, the good cholesterol has a hard time catching enough of it. With no way of getting thrown out and new particles being added, the excess LDL starts to pile up, creating fatty deposits called plaque in your arteries. These deposits grow into little dams, blocking your blood from flowing properly.
Reduce bad cholesterol with a good diet
Since most LDL comes from the foods you eat, your first step to lower LDL is to overhaul your diet.
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Eat more plants
The best foods for lowering cholesterol are plant-based. Plants do not have a liver, so they do not produce cholesterol. There is not a single fruit, vegetable, or grain on the planet that contains cholesterol. Any part of a plant that is non-poisonous and safe to eat — root, shoot, fruit, tuber, bulb, leaf, flower, and seed — is a good choice.
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Choose the right cooking oil
Seed and nut oils are cholesterol-free. Palm oil, palm kernel oil, coconut oil, and cocoa butter do contain large amounts of unhealthy saturated fat, but again, these are cholesterol-free. Peanut, canola, avocado, olive, sunflower, sesame, and soybean are all good oils for reducing cholesterol.
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Change your cooking style
Deep-fried foods absorb a lot of fat, which ends up in your body. Switch to baking, grilling, or steaming which use considerably less oil. When putting oil on foods, either paint on a thin layer with a brush, toss food in a bowl to coat lightly, or drain excess oil away both before and after cooking.
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Cut down on meat and seafood
All vertebrate animals have livers that produce cholesterol. Vertebrate animals include mammals (cows, sheep, goats, deer, pigs), birds (chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys), reptiles and amphibians (alligators, frogs), and most fish.
Many invertebrate animals (crabs, lobsters, shrimp, and other shellfish) also contain significant amounts of cholesterol.
You don’t have to give up meat and fish entirely. Just choose better. Lean muscle cuts with little to no fat are better than organ meats (liver, kidneys, heart) and processed meats (sausage, bacon, deli meats).
In seafood, anchovies, striped bass, tuna, mackerel, and scallops are better than squid, shrimp, and lobster.
In eggs, cholesterol is found in the yolk (the part that grows up to be a bird), so eat fewer yolks and more egg whites.
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Eat less dairy
Butter and full-fat cheese, milk, ice cream, and yogurt all contain cholesterol. Again, you don’t have to ditch dairy completely, but you can replace some of it, e.g. mix a splash of oat or almond milk with regular low-fat milk.
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Pick wholegrains over refined
During the refining process, grains are stripped of their bran (outer covering) and germ (the part that germinates into a plant). Breads, pasta, and breakfast cereals made of unrefined wholegrains include the bran and germ.
The presence of bran and germ in wholegrain flours increases their fiber content. Fiber is not digested by our bodies and as it travels through the stomach and intestines on its way to be excreted, it binds with cholesterol particles. Stuck to the fiber, cholesterol is removed from the body instead of being absorbed into the bloodstream.
Extra help with medications
How many grams of cholesterol per day you can eliminate from your body can vary. If dietary changes and exercise are not enough to manage your bad cholesterol levels, your primary care physician may prescribe medications called statins. With a balanced mix of lifestyle changes and medications, you may be able to lower your cholesterol levels in 2 to 6 months for a healthier, happier life.