Foods to Lower Cholesterol
Best Recommendations for Foods that Help Lower Cholesterol
- Eat fruits and vegetables high in vitamin C and beta carotene that prevent damaging oxidation of cholesterol.
- Eat oils, nuts, seeds and grains, notably wheat germ, high in vitamin E.
- Eat sardines and mackerel fish rich in ubiquinol-10 (coenzyme-Q10), a more recently discovered artery-protecting antioxidant.
- Eat foods high in antioxidant monounsaturated fatty acids, such as olive oil, almonds and avocados, shown to reduce oxidation of LDLs.
- Restrict fats that are easily oxidized, such as omega-6 vegetable fats, as in corn, safflower and sunflower seed oils.
Fruit and Vegetables Lower Cholesterol
The main foods that help lower cholesterol are without a doubt fruits and vegetables, mainly because of their vitamin C and E content and other antioxidant compounds.
Vitamin C contained in fruits and vegetables combats cholesterol in two important ways: it acts as a bodyguard for HDL cholesterol that cleanse your arteries of the 'bad' LDL cholesterol and, along with vitamin E, blocks transformation of LDL cholesterol that destroys arteries.
According to Dr. Judith Hallfrisch of the National Institute of Health, men and women who ate 180 milligrams of vitamin C a day (the amount found in one cup of strawberries plus one cup of broccoli) had 11% higher HDLs than those who ate one third as much vitamin C. One theory is that vitamin C protects HDLs from attack and destruction by rampaging oxygen free radicals.
According to Dr. Judith Hallfrisch of the National Institute of Health, men and women who ate 180 milligrams of vitamin C a day (the amount found in one cup of strawberries plus one cup of broccoli) had 11% higher HDLs than those who ate one third as much vitamin C. One theory is that vitamin C protects HDLs from attack and destruction by rampaging oxygen free radicals.
To understand how vital vitamin C and E are, you have only to consider the arteries of experimental monkeys that Anthony J. Verlangieri, Ph.D, studied for six years at the University of Mississipi's Atherosclerosis Research Laboratory.
When he fed them lard and cholesterol and very little vitamin C and E, the arteries became severely damaged and clogged.
But he was able to block the arterial deterioration and even reverse it by adding vitamin C and E to the high-fat diet.
For example, fat-fed monkeys that got the vitamins had only 1/3 of the artery blockage.
More startling, feeding monkeys relatively low doses of the vitamins for a couple of years actually reversed the arterial blockage by 8 to 33%!
Could you imagine what would happen if you included other foods that help lower cholesterol in your diet and reduced the saturated fat intake at the same time? Well, enough said...
The antioxidant vitamins work, say experts, by zapping oxygen free radicals that otherwise would turn LDL cholesterol toxic and dangerous.
The antioxidant vitamins work, say experts, by zapping oxygen free radicals that otherwise would turn LDL cholesterol toxic and dangerous.
It doesn't take much to mount a defense, says Harvard researcher Balz Frei, Ph.D, but a mere 160 mg. of vitamin C a day - a couple of large oranges - gives body tissues enough ammunition to block free radicals and cripple LDL's ability to infiltrate arteries.
Please note that this is almost three time the recommended daily intake of vitamin C (around 60 mg) and it goes to show that for optimum nutrition and to reverse the damaging effects of a bad diet, the recommended amount of vitamin C is not enough, so you should include plenty of foods that help lower cholesterol, especially fruits and vegetables.
Apples Help Lower Cholesterol
Apples and other foods high in a soluble fibre called pectin are amongst the foods that help lower cholesterol.
French researchers had a goup of middle-aged healthy men and women add two or three apples a day to their ordinary diet for a month.
LDL choleserol fell in 80% of them - and by more than 10% in half of them. Good HDL cholesterol also went up. Interestingly, the apples had a greater impact on women. One woman's cholesterol plunged by 30%.
Similarly, David Gee, Ph.D., at Central Washington University, tested high fibre apple slush left over from making apple juice. He had the apple fibre baked into cookies. When 26 men with faily high cholesterol ate three apple cookies a day, instead of a placebo cookie, their cholesterol dipped an average 7%. Each apple cookie had 15 grams of fibre - the amount in four or five apples, he says.
Most expert mainly credit pectin in apples, the same stuff used in jelly to make it jell, with lowering cholesterol, although other apple componenets also play a part. As Dr. David Kritchevsky of the Wista Institute in Philadelphia points out, a whole apple lowers cholesterol more than its pectin content predicts, so something else is at work here that they haven't quite figured out yet.
Carrots and Cholesterol
Carrots, too, are amongst the foods that help lower cholesterol also because of their high soluble fibre content.
Dr Philip Pfeffer, Ph.D, calculates that the fibre in a couple of carrots a day can lower cholesterol by 10 to 20%, which would bring many people with moderately high cholesterol into the normal range.
After he started eating a couple of carrots a day, his own blood cholesterol dived around 20%.
A Canadian test found that men who ate about two and a half raw carrots every day saw their cholesterol sink an average 11%. According to a German study, the amount of beta carotene in one or two carrots also boosted good HDLs significantly.
The carrot fibre remains therapeutic whether the carrots are raw, cooked, frozen, canned, chopped or liquefied, says Dr. Pfeffer.
Grapefruit and Cholesterol
Grapefruits are amongst the foods that help lower cholesterol.
They contain a unique type of soluble fibre called galacturonic acid, that not only helps lower 'bad' cholesterol, but may help dissolve or reverse plaque already clogging your arteries.
In one study by Dr. James Cerda, professor of gastroenterology at the University of Florida, the grapefruit fibre found in about two and a half grapefruit segments eaten every day lowered blood cholesterol about 10% and he noted that the grapefruit compound actually resulted in less diseased and narrowed arteries and aortas, somehow sweeping away some of the build-up plaque.
Foods that Can Raise Good HDL Cholesterol
We've seen how important it is to eat foods that help lower 'bad' LDL cholesterol, but just as important it's to add foods that help raise 'good' HDL cholesterol and some of them are:
- Oysters, mussels
- Grape seed oil
- Avocados
- Vitamin C-rich foods (bell peppers, broccoli, oranges)
- Beta carotene-rich foods (carrots, spinach, broccoli)
- Wine, beer, alcohol in moderation
Caution: Very low-fat diets (10% or less of calories from fat) depress HDLs.
Oatmeal
You won't be surprised to hear that oatmeal porridge is one of the best cholesterol lowering foods. This is because the protein in oats is a good source of the amino acid L-arginine, from which your body produces nitric oxide.
Nitric oxide has many jobs to do in keeping your heart healthy, including reducing oxidation and inflammation.
Although arginine may help treat high blood pressure and other markers of heart disease, some research find it also helps reduce cholesterol.
In one study, 45 healthy elderly volunteers took either arginine supplement or a placebo for 2 weeks. Those taking the supplement showed significant drops in their total and LDL cholesterol levels, but those taking a placebo experimented no change.
By the way, you also find arginine in peanuts, pine nuts, black cumin, butternut squash, watermelon, pumpkin, sesame and soy.
Barley
If you fancy something different for breakfast, why don't you try a porridge made with barley instead? Perhaps sprinkled with chopped nuts and cinnamon?
It's really delicious and it's good for lowering your cholesterol, too. In fact barley is one of the richest sources of beta-glucans, the plant component that is also in oatmeal and and has an exceptional cholesterol lowering power.
But a cup of barley can offer three times more beta-glucans than a cup of oatmeal.
I suggest you cook up a pot of barley once a week, so you can have some as a side dish at dinner, or make it into a lentil and barley soup, or use some for breakfast instead of oatmeal.
Beans
Beans are among the best cholesterol lowering foods.
Most if not all edible bean varieties pack a double whammy in terms of cholesterol control, with their fibre and lecithin, a plant-based fat that - believe it or not - is used in milk chocolate to keep the milk and chocolate from separating.
It turns out that lecithin can help lower cholesterol. The two together - fibre and lecithin - are probably behind beans' amazing benefits when it comes to blood fats.
One study found that just 1 1/2 cups of dried lentils or kidney beans a day could slash cholesterol levels by a whopping 19%... read more about the healing power of beans on heart disease
Soya beans
Amongst the beans, soya deserves a special mention.
Many studies find that when soy protein is substituted for high-fat protein sources like most red meats, there is a huge decline in cholesterol levels.
One of the most palatable types of soy is edamame. You just steam or boil them for about 5 minutes, sprinkle them with salt and pop them out of the pod into your mouth.
But let me warn you - they can be addictive, although that is not a bad thing considering that they are one of the best cholesterol lowering foods.
Dark chocolate
You don't immediately associate chocolate with cholesterol lowering foods and in fact, it doesn't lower cholesterol per se, but it will help prevent oxidation of those cholesterol molecules that turn an otherwise innocuous compound into a biological dirty bomb.
That's because dark chocolate (and it must be dark to be healthfully helpful) packs a powerful wallop of antioxidants, which neutralize nasty free radicals.
One study found that supplementing a typical American diet with 0.5 oz./15 grams of dark chocolate and about 0.75 oz./ 20 grams of cocoa powder was all it took to reduce LDL oxidation.
Cinnamon
The cinnamon that you can sprinkle on your porridge has its own cholesterol-reducing benefits.
About 1/2 tablespoon a day slashed LDL cholesterol levels by nearly a third in one study, cutting total cholesterol by 26%.
Try putting a sprinkling of cinnamon in your coffee before brewing.
It also makes a pretty good tea, either on its own or with fenugreek.
Cranberries
This fruit is good for more than just preventing urinary tract infections, but they're also very good at lowering cholesterol.
Not only are cranberries (and cranberry juice) one of the best sources of antioxidants around but they also yield extracted chemicals that can increase the amount of cholesterol your liver takes out of your bloodstream.
Once in the liver, that cholesterol can be processed for removal from your body.
Tea
A discussion about cholesterol lowering foods wouldn't be complete without mentioning tea - black or green - it doesn't seem to matter, either can lower your cholesterol.
Aim for about 5 cups a day; a government study found that after 3 weeks of drinking this amount, total cholesterol dropped by 6.5% and LDL cholesterol by 11.1%.
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