Beware of Bad Cholesterol

Posted by Kunal Kapur on January 15th, 2019

It is a common belief that cholesterol is very bad for health. While this notion has some truth to it, it is not all true. There are two kinds of cholesterol and they have opposing effects in the body and on health. You have the LDL (low density lipoprotein) which is harmful for health and then you have the HDL (high density lipoprotein) which is actually very good for your health. So your diet must be such that it can minimise the LDL while increasing the intake of HDL into the body. So scour ways which answers your question to “how to reduce LDL cholesterol?”

First of all, you cannot do away with cholesterol. This liver made compound has many important functions in the body. It maintains the flexibility of the cell walls and is also an important precursor of various significant hormones of the body. But however useful it may be, if it is the wrong type or the wrong place, it can harm the body.

Too much LDL happens to cause the formation of deposits in blood vessels clogging it and resulting in strokes, heart attacks and even kidney failures. HDL on the other hand helps carry the bad cholesterol away from the blood vessels so that they do not deposit there and cause the diseases. So when you wish to search the answer for “how to reduce cholesterol?” concentrate on reducing LDL amounts. This is because you do not want to reduce HDL levels. It is your saviour. So the various ways in which you can try reducing amounts of LDL in the body include –

• Try increasing monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) in the body which help reduce harmful LDL and increasing the very useful HDL. Studies have shown that having monounsaturated fats in the diet helps increase HDL by 12% than not having them. Such sources of MUFA include – olive oil, canola oil, almonds, walnuts, pecans, hazelnut, cashews and avocados.
• Try using polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). The star player in this aspect is Omega 3 fatty acids. These also help reduce bad LDL in the body and thereby reduces the risk of coronary heart disease.
• Nowadays the use of spreads have surfaced and this has made butter be replaced with compounds like margarine. But with margarine you acquire the risk of margarine trans fats. But with spreads like Nutralite, you do not even have to worry about that. It contains no bad cholesterol, 0 trans fats, 0 carbs. It also comes with vitamins like A,D and E, MUFA, PUFA and Omega 3 fatty acids.