Life style changes for lowering Cholesterol

Everyone knows about the cholesterol and it’s ill effects. I am sure there are so many of us trying to see a great reduction in the cholesterol and triglycerides. I have done enough personal research to publish my own experiences and suggestions. Hope many of you would be able to take at least few tips from this article. The food and lifestyle changes are in the context of Asian-Indians living in India or abroad. These changes are not only for the cholesterol reduction but also for a healthy life style. These are the experiences collected from Dr.Mantena RamaRaju, The CR Way, and Longevity Diet.

Do’s / Recommended Food :

Moderation is the Key. For many of us this is the hardest part to train our brain.

• Have early dinner. If you have a late dinner, there are more chances that the energy is converted to fat and stored in body. Early dinner makes it possible for your body to absorb the energy and also spend some amount of it before you go to bed.
• Recommendation is to have smaller meals at regular intervals RATHER than heavy dinner or heavy lunch.
• Try not to skip break-fast. Having break-fast does not mean to have a heavy break fast worth 500 calories. Even if you have a fresh fruit juice or 200gms of fruits, it goes a long way.
• Do not take water while having a meal. Instead, have water between the meals to keep your body hydrated. It is not a reason to say that the food is spicy to take water. Make food in such a way that it is not necessary to have water along with meal.
• 3-4 small meals of fruits is very necessary that your body gets natural food. It could be a apple in the morning. Banana in the afternoon. Pear in the evening and Water Melon at night.
• Protein content in food is very important. Thus, it is necessary to have all sorts of beans to help you maintain good health and body’s basic metabolic activity. Protein can come from Milk, Beans and all sorts of Lentils.
• Calcium is very important part of your daily diet. It is not only necessary for women but an important component for men too.  This constitutes for major part of your bone strength at your old age.
• Iron can be obtained from many of the vegetables. Even if you take your vegetables daily, it is recommended to take at least 2-3 dates every day. Many people have the illusion that dates gives  alot of energy, but the average dates available on the market gives only 50-70 Calories per 3 dates.
• Carbohydrates are essential for your body. Potato, Sweet Potato, Rice, Wheat and other millets gives you abundant carbohydrates. In any case, all the vegetables or processed food that you buy, essentially contains carbohydrates. This is one part that you need not worry and at the same time restrain from having too much of them. Carbohydrates potentially increase your Triglycerides.
• Moderation of sodium in foods. Ideally it is NOT necessary to add any salt to the foods (EXCEPT for taste). Each and every vegetable HAS some amount of salt in it. So, it is necessary to add salt in our foods that we eat.
• Eat more of salads for lunch and dinner as a first course. Salads fills your stomach with more water content and also acts as a good source for dietary fibers.

Following vegetables, fruits, fats, beans and nuts are highly recommended for day-to-day consumption. These can be taken along with your break fast, lunch and dinner.

Vegetables	Green Beans	Broccoli	Brussels Sprouts	Cabbage
	Cauliflower	Celery root	Cucumber	Eggplant
	Mushrooms	Onions – alltypes	Parsley	Peppers (green, yellow, purple)
	Spinach	Squash	Zucchini	Tomotoes
	Garlic	Leeks
Fruits	Avocados	Raspberries	Cranberries	Strawerries
Fats	Grapeseed Oil	Olive Oil
Nuts	Almonds	Pistachios	Hazelnuts	Walnuts
	Pecans
Beans	Black-eyed peas	Garbanzo beans	Lentils, red or green	Mung beans
	Pinto beans	Soybeans	Barley	Green peas

Dont’s / Not-Recommended :

• Laziness seems to be the biggest hurdle for so many people to come out of their comfort zones and do something worthwhile.
• Procrastination : Do not differ any good resolutions that helps your health. We always feel to do a thing tomorrow. But unfortunately, due to ill health many do not see tomorrow.
• Live in Today and Live for Today. Tomorrow is uncertain.
• When we talk about the fruit juices, they are NOT the preserved fruit juices that we get in market. You need to take fresh fruit juice made at home and no sugar added.
• Do not drink or at the least limit the intake of the Coffee. If you like something hot to take, prefer black/green tea. These days you get a lot of tea with anti-oxidants.
• Do not take Frozen, Processed or Preserved food. You MUST avoid them to greater extent. (I have used a strong work “MUST” as these foods are absolutely forbidden if you need good health)
• Preservatives are bad for your system. When you need to sanitize your home, you use all sorts of chemicals to kill bacteria and virus. This is the same reasoning that goes for preservatives. If food need to look fresh for long time, you need to apply these preservatives. They are harmful chemicals in mild quantities which can cause damage to your system in long run.
• Do not have any kind of deep fried foods. If you fry your food in butter or vegetable oils you get a lot of additional saturated and trans fats which are bad for your cholesterol and bad for heart disease. Good fats are found in vegetable and fish oils and they won’t raise your cholesterol.

Summary : We all dream of a very good health and there by good life. However very few actually make it to the end of the life for many different reasons. Many likes to enjoy the first part of the life in ignorance (for almost 50 years) and loose on the second half of life to different health problems (diabetes, blood pressure, heart problems, etc…). Body is the tool by which one achieves different things in life. Without sound body one can not have sound mind and thus your actions will speak for it.

Realizing the mistakes and finding the right method/tool for your body’s health is the difficult thing for many. Challenge is to find the right path and then to walk through that path. Many look at the health as a periodic event that starts and ends; but this is the biggest mistake. Your health starts when you are born and ends when your die. So, you need to do everything to keep it at its best.We need to inculcate the good habits as out LIFESTYLE rather than a periodic event. When someone goes to Weight Watchers, the idea is to reduce few pounds in months time. But the same person, who reduced 20 pounds will increase by 30 pounds. These kind of short-cuts will definitely show results in the short-term but are no good for the life time health. If you have any experiences related to health, please do share and let others benefit.

Recommended Reading :

• Food Facts – Part rt
  
• Effects of Caffeinated beverages
• ABCs of “Cholesterol”
• Natural Living in modern society

Food Facts – Part I

Fact 1 : Contrary to what many people believe, drinking liquids of any kind while eating will dilute important stomach acids needed for proper digestion. Don’t drink liquids with your meal, but rather , drink between meals to refresh and hydrate without interrupting your body’s nutritional absorption.

Fact 2 : Lemon or lime juice has the additional benefit of balancing pH by keeping your system from being too acidic. This is counter-intuitive but true : These fruits, which contain a fair amount of citric acid, have an overall effect on the body. Still another benefit that makes lemon or lime juice a perfect way to break fast is that both help cleanse the liver of toxins- a good thing to do on a regular basis. The lemon juice in warm water needs only fifteen minutes to work its magic. Warm water facilitates digestion.

Fact 3 : Giving your body a break from food facilitates healing to begin at cellular level- flushing toxins, eliminating dead and dying cells while cleansing, nourishing, and spurring the growth  of new cells. The best part of fasting, however, is the natural “high” you get that may result from the brain’s release of antidepressant-like chemical known as Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF).

Fact 4 : Calorie Restriction “thins the blood”, that is it reduces the platelet adhesiveness, thus decreasing the potential for dangerous blood clots and the number of white blood cells- two essential components necessary to a successful immune system.

Fact 5 : Not all fat is bad. Adding some high-quality fat sources like olive-oil, fish oil or walnuts to a meal can improve cardiovascular health.

Fact 6 : Eating carbohydrates without any fat at all is a bad idea. When you eat carbs without fat, the body converts part of them to fats known as triglycerides, which when elevated, are a risk factor for heart diseases.

Fact 7 : Fat-free meals actually increase the amount of bad fat in your blood stream, so always include some good quality fat with every meal.

Fact 8 : Reducing salt in food can help you to have your blood pressure controlled. But a completely sodium free food, in fact, may put  you in danger of irregular heartbeat.

Fact 9 : Just adding fish oil alone will likely produce a measurable blood pressure drop.

Fact 10 : Maitake and shiitake mushrooms provide valuable immune system benefits and both have been shown to possess anticarcinogenic properties.

You might also want to see :

• Effects of Caffeinated beverages
• ABCs of “Cholesterol”
• Natural Living in modern society

Effects of Caffeinated beverages

For all those who needs reasons to stop or quit caffeinated beverages… here you go…

• Elevates blood sugar
• Elevates blood fats
• Increases blood pressure
• Stimulates central nervous system
• Causes irregular heart beat
• Increases urinary calcium and magnesium losses (may impact on long-term bone health)
• Increases stomach acid secretion (aggravates stomach ulcer)
• Causes tremors, irritability and nervousness
• Causes insomnia and disruption of sleep patterns
• Causes anxiety and depression
• Causes hightened symptoms of pre-menstrual-syndrome (PMS)

Following topics might interest you.

What is Cholesterol

Natural Living in modern society

ABCs of “Cholesterol”

Cholesterol is the enemy for many of us living in this modern society. Many suffer from the chronic heart diseases and wants to come out of the ever increasing heart risks. Well, taking pills like Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Zetia and Vytorin definitely reduce and control the cholesterol. However, that’s not the real solution. A wise decision would be to get educated about the Cholesterol and its ill effects. This does not imply that the cholesterol is bad. But, excess of cholesterol is bad for health and can increase the risk for heart diseases.

This writing gives you an overview of  cholesterol and why is this lipo protein required by the body. This writing is compilation of the information from different sources and a result of lot of research work. Hope this helps you in knowing and fighting cholesterol.

What & Why of  Cholesterol :

Cholesterol is a critically important compound in the human body. It is synthesized in the liver and then used in the manufacture of bile, hormones, and nerve tissue. Cholesterol is a type of lipid, one of the classes of chemical compounds essential to human health . Cholesterol makes up an important part of the membranes of each cell in the body. In addition, the liver uses cholesterol to make bile acids, which aid digestion. The body also uses cholesterol to produce vitamin D and certain hormones, including sex hormones.

The human body contains a feedback mechanism that keeps the serum concentration of cholesterol approximately constant. The liver itself manufactures about 600 mg of cholesterol a day, but that output changes depending on the intake of cholesterol in the daily diet. As a person consumes more cholesterol, the liver reduces it production of the compound. If one’s intake of cholesterol greatly exceeds the body’s needs, excess cholesterol may then precipitate out of blood and be deposited on arterial linings.

One of the major uses of cholesterol is the synthesis of bile acids. These are synthesized in the liver from cholesterol and are secreted in the bile. They are essential for the absorption of fat from the contents of the intestine. A clue to the importance of cholesterol is that most of the bile acids are not lost in the feces but are reabsorbed from the lower intestine and recycled to the liver. There is some loss, however, and to compensate for this and to meet other needs, the liver synthesizes some 1500–2000 mg of new cholesterol each day. It synthesizes cholesterol from the products of fat metabolism.

Large concentrations of cholesterol are found in the brain, spinal cord, and liver. Gallstones that occur in the gall bladder are largely made up of cholesterol. It is also found in bile (a fluid secreted by the liver), from which it gets its name: chol (Greek for “bile”) plus stereos (Greek for “solid”).

Normally, cholesterol produced by the liver circulates in the blood and is taken up by the body’s cells for their needs. Cholesterol can also be removed from the blood by the liver and secreted in bile into the small intestine. From the intestine, cholesterol is released back into the bloodstream.The body does not need cholesterol from dietary sources because the liver makes cholesterol from other nutrients.

Cholesterol and Triglycerides :

Cholesterol and triglycerides, another lipid, are two of the major fatty substances in the blood. Triglycerides may be used by cells for energy, or they may be stored for later use. Doctors often measure the amount of cholesterol and triglycerides in blood to help determine a patient’s overall health. High levels of cholesterol, particularly if accompanied by high levels of triglycerides, increase the risk of heart disease. Both cholesterol and triglycerides are carried through the bloodstream in large molecules called lipoproteins.

“Good” cholesterol and “Bad” cholesterol

Cholesterol is carried in the blood bound to protein molecules called lipoproteins. Most of the cholesterol is transported on low-density lipoproteins (LDLs). LDL receptors on body cell membranes help regulate the blood cholesterol level by binding with LDLs, which are then taken up by the cells. However, if there are more LDLs than LDL receptors, the excess LDLs, or “bad” cholesterol, can be deposited in the lining of the arteries. High-density lipoproteins (HDLs), or “good” cholesterol, are thought to help protect against damage to the artery walls by carrying excess LDL back to the liver.

High levels of LDL-cholesterol in blood are a primary cause of heart attacks. LDL can be found in the wall of heart arteries. Low levels of HDL-cholesterol also increase the risk of heart attack. Some scientists believe that HDLs help remove cholesterol from tissues.

Though high total and LDL cholesterol levels, along with low HDL cholesterol, can increase heart disease risk, they are among several other risk factors. These include cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and physical inactivity. If any of these is present in addition to high blood cholesterol, the risk of heart disease is even greater.

Factors affecting blood cholesterol levels:

• Heredity–High cholesterol often runs in families. Even though specific genetic causes have been identified in only a minority of cases, genes still play a role in influencing blood cholesterol levels.
• Weight–Excess weight tends to increase blood cholesterol levels. Losing weight may help lower levels.
• Exercise–Regular physical activity may not only lower LDL cholesterol, but it may increase levels of desirable HDL.
• Age and gender–Before menopause, women tend to have total cholesterol levels lower than men at the same age. Cholesterol levels naturally rise as men and women age. Menopause is often associated with increases in LDL cholesterol in women.
• Stress–Studies have not shown stress to be directly linked to cholesterol levels. But experts say that because people sometimes eat fatty foods to console themselves when under stress, this can cause higher blood cholesterol.

People also may have high cholesterol levels if they have an abnormal gene and this disorder is called familial hypercholesterolemia. Other factors that can cause high blood cholesterol include a malfunctioning thyroid gland, kidney disease, diabetes, and the use of various medicines, including certain diuretics.

Lipid Profile Tests:

The lipid profile is a group of tests that are often ordered together to determine risk of coronary heart disease. The tests that make up a lipid profile are tests that have been shown to be good indicators of whether someone is likely to have a heart attack or stroke caused by blockage of blood vessels (hardening of the arteries). The lipid profile includes total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol (often called good cholesterol), LDL-cholesterol (often called bad cholesterol), and triglycerides.

The table shows the range of typical values as well as the values above (or below) which the subject may be at increased risk of developing atherosclerosis.

LIPID	Typical values (mg/dl)	Desirable (mg/dl)
Cholesterol (total)	170–210	<200
LDL cholesterol	60–140	<130
HDL cholesterol	35–85	>40
Triglycerides	40–150	<13

Note 1 : Total Cholesterol = HDL Cholesterol + LDL Cholesterol + 20% of Triglycerides

Note 2 : Cardiac Risk Ratio = Total Cholesterol / HDL Cholesterol. A cardiac risk ratio greater than 7 is considered a warning (you are encouraged to calculate the risk ratio with the latest lipid profile results)

Conditions Caused by High Cholesterol

High levels of cholesterol can cause a condition known as atherosclerosis, or the hardening of the arteries. When the arteries become filled with plaque, the walls become stiff and brittle. This not only restricts blood flow, but it can also cause the arteries to burst because they are so brittle; this can lead to blood clots.

But sometimes diet and exercise alone are not enough to reduce cholesterol to goal levels. Perhaps a one is genetically predisposed to high blood cholesterol. In these cases, doctors often prescribe drugs. The most prominent cholesterol drugs are in the statin family, an array of powerful treatments that includes Mevacor (lovastatin), Lescol (fluvastatin), Pravachol (pravastatin), Zocor (simvastatin), Baycol (cervastatin), and Lipitor (atorvastatin). Lipitor is the most popular drug ever sold ever in the history of the world. Lipitor does more than $9 billion in sales per year – that’s more than one million dollars per hour, every hour of every day, 365 days per year.

Summary :

Cholesterol is a type of lipid, one of the classes of chemical compounds essential to human health. Cholesterol and triglycerides, another lipid, are two of the major fatty substances in the blood. High-density lipoproteins (HDLs), or “good” cholesterol, are thought to help protect against damage to the artery walls by carrying excess LDL back to the liver. High levels of LDL-cholesterol in blood are a primary cause of heart attacks. LDL can be found in the wall of heart arteries.

Large concentrations of cholesterol are found in the brain, spinal cord, and liver. Gallstones that occur in the gall bladder are largely made up of cholesterol. It is also found in bile (a fluid secreted by the liver), from which it gets its name: chol (Greek for “bile”) plus stereos (Greek for “solid”).

Matrix lover gets cold…

Today it is the saddest incident in the history of entire human species. No one has ever seen the domination of the this bad virus (cold) over the human race. We humans have always prevailed and we will. Today we are less energetic, these bad guys (virus) have taken our physical strength; However we are as strong as ever and we are strengthened mentally. We will show them once again that human will and power always outlives the physical nature.

Today is the day that we will not give into these bad guys. We will gather all our armies and ammunition and be ready to prevail and thrive. We will show them once again that we are HUMANS and they are BAD guys. Today we need to show our courage, strength and endurance. We will not fall pray to any of the bad allies (anti-bio-tics), we will keep all our friendship but use none.

Finally my friends, hold on to your faith and will. Tomorrow is a new day and we the HUMAN race is going have another victory and we will kick these bad guys butt off and make them run into the black holes.

I STRONGLY CONDEMN MUMBAI ATTACKS

This is in response to sad and anger provoking incidents happened in India. I pay tribute to all those heroes, who have fought and gave their lives for this country in rescuing many innocent lives in Mumbai. I would not want to talk more about this fearful incident, but want to remind everyone a small message.

“Please do not forget such incidents and move on. This kind of ill cultured and brutal behavior should be stopped. If not done or if we (YOU, ME and Others) relax thinking that nothing happened to me , a time will come when the same incident might happen to one of us or to our near or dear. And, that time we will just be in agony and nothing else. We all as part of the India and Indian community in different parts of the world, please spread this message across and let everyone know that we STRONGLY CONDEMN these brutal acts.”

Most of us has been thinking that, “As long as i am safe; i don’t care”. But PLEASE come out of these thoughts and be aware that we are all part of the same system and society. If we don’t bring out our frustration, thoughts, ideas and kill our fears and URGE a result oriented action and thought process, nothing is going to happen. We have seen so many riots, bomb blasts and still we are passive. We and Media would like to talk about it when the incident happens and after few months, “EVERY THING IS NORMAL”. People behave as though nothing has happened and we are living in a perfect world. A time comes for every one, when they loose their patience, let their ACTIONs speak with no fear. “YOU FEAR, YOU SUFFER”.

When i talk to few people recently, they dont even want to talk about it. Some people feel sad about this indicent and they dont want to talk and some dont care about it. The attitude is like, “I am in XYZ country; I dont care”. With all the due respect to your personal feelings, i would urge such people to come out of their coward clothes and behave as a responsible citizens. One need not be patriatic, to feel bad about these issues and raise a voice. It just takes a meaningful, sensible human being to condemn such things and “EXPRESS THAT WHAT HAPPENED IS REALLY BAD”.

This is the question of the “Terrorism” and WE CAN NOT FIGHT it, if we have so many differences among ourselves and “fear even to speak out”.  Do speak out about “WHAT YOU FEEL” and have a result oriented thought process. World needs to know what each and every one of us feel.

Finally, i salute to all the heroes of the attacks and my sincere condolences to all those families who have lost their near and dear. Being away from my country, i am trying to do what i can.

26/11 MUMBAI ATTACK MARTYRS

India pays tribute to its heroes