Diets for high cholesterol.

Learn how foods high in carbohydrate make diets for high cholesterol? A diet to control high cholesterol consists of fruits and vegetables. Understand why below.

When you have high cholesterol, you may believe that the best diets for high cholesterol are always low fat and low carbohydrate. Decreasing "bad" cholesterol (LDL) and increasing "good" cholesterol (HDL) is the goal of efficient diets that are capable of lowering overall cholesterol.

First of all, you need to understand that rather than looking at how high is your total cholesterol and LDL, you need to undestand LDL and HDL and cholesterol ratios.

LDL or the "bad" cholesterol, travels on the blood and tissues, and cells use it for various purposes e.g. to make sex hormones or gloss your skin and hair to enable it to cast off water. The balance deposits on the artery walls. (This is what causes clogged arteries over a period of time).

However, HDL or the "good" cholesterol travels through artery walls and finds excess cholesterol that tissues and cells didn't use, gathers it up and takes it back to the liver where it is disposed of.

So, the more HDL "good" cholesterol you have the better it is, since this is the one that cleanses the arteries from bad cholesterol.

And that's where cholesterol ratios come into play. The ratio is between your HDL cholesterol and total cholesterol. (You can find these ratios by having a blood lipid test).

The lower your ratio and the higher your HDL, the better it is. That's why there are people that have low cholesterol levels but still get a heart attack because their HDL or "good" cholesterol is low as well, and as a result their ratio is high.

You should have your total cholesterol a little less then 4 times your HDL e.g. if your total cholesterol is 230 (which is on the high side) but your HDL or "good" cholesterol is 60 then your ratio is 3.8 which is good.

In Protein Power, Michael and Mary Eades write that this ratio of HDL to LDL and total cholesterol, is actually more important then total cholesterol in predicting heart attack, heart disease, stroke, arteriosclerosis, coronary heart disease, coronary artery disease and other cardiovascular diseases.

Having understood this, a diet to control high cholesterol need not necessarily be diets and foods low in cholesterol. You need to lower cholesterol, but the dilemma is that you need to lower the bad (LDL) cholesterol and not the good (HDL) one.

What you need to understand is that even though a diet which may be low in fats, will lower cholesterol, but it may lower both: the good and the bad cholesterol. What you ideally need to do is: lower bad (LDL) cholesterol and increase good (HDL) cholesterol.

For example a high carbohydrate diet is not one of the best diets for high cholesterol and it is now very controversial because what happens is the total cholesterol lowers a little, but the HDL lowers more then the total cholesterol.

That means the ratios actually become more dangerous because there is less HDL per LDL then there was before consuming a high carbohydrate diet.

There's also controversy in regards to a low fat diet, because in one study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Dr. Mark Borkman, of Sydney, Australia and his group studied, young, normal weight, non-diabetic people. They were either put on a high-carbohydrate diet, or a high-fat diet for a three-week period.

After 3 weeks they switched. And had their cholesterol counts taken at each three week interval. On the high fat diet they had much better ratios, then on the high carbohydrate diet. You can read more about the study in Protein Power, or if you're of technical mind you can review the whole article on this study by clicking here.

In regards to diets for high cholesterol and foods high in cholesterol understand this. The liver manufactures 80 percent of the cholesterol needed. The 20 other percent comes from the foods we eat.

So, when you eat foods high in cholesterol, they are can be considered part of diets for high cholesterol, since your liver will cut down manufacturing it. It means, that eating high cholesterol foods is not that harmful as compared to high carbohydrate and fat diets.

However, despite the study by Dr. Mark Borkman, you should avoid saturated fats from your diet. Saturated fat causes the liver to produce more harmful cholesterol.

Saturated fat also raises triglyceride levels and thickens the blood. Whenever consuming fat foods such as junk food, cream sauces and desserts, try to choose polyunsaturated and unsaturated fats.

For example, coconut oil may be cholesterol free, and you can consider as part of diets for high cholesterol, but it is highly saturated and more dangerous than seafood, as it causes the liver to produce more harmful cholesterol. Saturated fat also raises triglyceride levels and thickens the blood.

Seafood, on the other hand, you may not consider as part of diets for high cholesterol since it contains cholesterol. But it also contains the protective polyunsaturated fats that cause the liver to produce less harmful cholesterol and more protective HDL cholesterol.

And a final word. Fruits and vegetables are a safe bet, as mostly they are not part of diets for high cholesterol. On the contrary, they are either low cholesterol, lower cholesterol or cholesterol free. When you choose your food eat 2/3 from vegetables and fruits and 1/3 other foods.

In case you're looking for an alternative to diets for high cholesterol, which can lower LDL cholesterol, increase HDL cholesterol and reduce LDL to HDL ratio. click here.