Healthy Eating Tips: Lowering High Blood Cholesterol

• cut back on total amount of fat in your diet, particularly saturated and trans fat. To lower elevated blood fats, no more than 25% of your day’s calories should come from fat. To get 25% or less of the day’s calories from fat, most men should limit fat intake to 75 grams or less, and most women should limit fat intake to 53 grams or less.
• eat lots of fibre, especially soluble fibre, which helps to lower LDL Cholesterol. Whole grain foods, vegetables, fruits and legumes.
• when a recipe calls for fat, use a little soft margarine or an oil high in either polyunsaturates or monounsatuartes instead of butter or shortening. Good choices in oil are olive, canola, safflower, sunflower and corn.
• Restrict the cholesterol in your diet to less than 250 mg a day. The main foods to avoid are organ meats, such as liver, and whole eggs. Eat no more than 2 whole eggs per week, although cholesterol free egg whites can be used in food preparation. Two egg whites combine with 1 tsp oil can replace 1 whole egg in most recipes.
• If your triglycerides are high as well, avoid all forms fo suger (white and brown sugar, honey, syrup) and alcohol since sugar and alcohol, once digested, are readily converted to triglycerides. Eating more fish rich in omega 3 fat may also help lower blood triglycerides.
• If you are overweight, lose weight. Even small losses can make a big difference.

Healthy Eating Tips: Raising the Good HDL-Cholesterol

• Exercise every day. It’s more important than ever
• Choose margarines and oils like olive and canola oil that contain mostly monounsaturated fat rather than oils like safllower, sunflower and corn oil that contain mostly polyunsaturates. Monounsaturated fat doesn’t lower HDL-C, whereas polyunsaturates do.
• Women who are at menopause might consider hormone replacement therapy since estrogen raises HDL-C levels.