{"id":410,"date":"2017-06-30T05:33:38","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T05:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myvitaminpacks.com\/mvp\/?p=410"},"modified":"2022-12-05T07:56:32","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T07:56:32","slug":"how-to-lower-cholesterol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/how-to-lower-cholesterol\/","title":{"rendered":"New Cholesterol Guidelines"},"content":{"rendered":"The American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) recently updated their cholesterol guidelines to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases (Stone, November 12, 2013). This is the first major change in these national guidelines since 2004.The previous guidelines focused on achieving ideal numbers for total serum cholesterol as well as HDL, LDL, and triglyceride levels. However, the AHA and ACC are now shying away from the numerical goals for cholesterol and instead are focusing on a person\u2019s \u201crisk category.\u201d There are only two risk categories.\u00a0 The high-risk group includes people with diabetes, a history of a heart attack, or extremely high levels of LDL. They recommend prescription intervention with statin-type drugs for all people in this group. Among people in the lower risk category, statin-type drugs are still recommended for those with a 7.5% risk of heart attack or stroke within the next 10 years. This risk is determined by a new risk calculator which takes into account age, blood pressure, total cholesterol, HDL, age, race, and status as a diabetic or smoker. People should discuss their health with their general care practitioner to evaluate their risk for developing cardiovascular diseases.While statins have shown marked success in helping many people improve undesirable cholesterol levels, they also may bring with them side effects that are less than desirable: memory loss, mental confusion, high blood sugar, and muscle pain. Other common, but less severe side effects may include a headache, insomnia, flushing, fatigue, dizziness, nausea, gastrointestinal distress, or skin rash.Lower Cholesterol with Easy Diet Changesbalanced healthful diet should not have the largest portion of the meal or most commonly eaten foods be steak and eggs. The foods that should make up the lion\u2019s share of your diet are vegetables, fruit, whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes. These foods are high in soluble fiber, which has been shown to reduce cholesterol. (2)The recommendation is 25-30 grams of fiber per day. If you incorporate fiber at every meal and with snacks, then you will have no problem meeting recommendations.\u00a0 An example of a days worth of fiber would be: \u00bd cup oatmeal, 1 medium apple with skin, 2 plain rye crackers, \u00bd cup kidney beans, \u00bd avocado, 1 ounce almonds, \u00bc cup whole grain pasta noodles.The main source of protein in your diet should be all types of seafood and then poultry, eggs, milk and yogurt. Lastly include red meat and sweets in small portions. When considering fats, focus on increasing the amount of mono-unsaturated fats like olive, canola, sesame and peanut oil.I have just described the popular Mediterranean diet. My hope is that you now have an idea of how you could incorporate some it\u2019s components. The reason for my hope is that this diet showed to reduce mortality from cardiovascular disease by 9% in meta-analysis. (3)For those who would prefer to steer clear of prescription statins, supplements may be a good alternative.Red yeast riceThis contains a natural statin, mevastatin, (Monacolin K) shown effective at improving cholesterol and triglyceride levels in several research studies. Red yeast rice contains much less Monacolin K than prescription statin drugs. However, the Monacolin K in red yeast rice works synergistically with other compounds in the extract to produce a greater effect on cholesterol levels than with Monacolin K alone. Mild and occasional side effects have been reported by some people taking red yeast rice, which include heartburn, gas, and dizziness. (A7 Health Notes, 2013)GarlicGarlic has shown promise in research at improving cholesterol levels, lowering triglycerides, and lowering blood pressure. \u00a0(A7 Health Notes, 2013) For those not interested in consuming raw cloves of garlic daily, capsules of standardized extracts are available.\r    \r        \r            \r                \r            \r        \r        \r            \r                Try our Garlic Extract\r                Garlic goes beyond the kitchen to help you maintain a healthy heart.*\r                View Our Garlic Extract\r            \r        \r    \r    View Our Garlic Extract\rGuggul (Gugulipid)Guggul comes from the yellow resin of the Mukul Myrrh tree, native to India. This resin has been used medicinally as a part of the Ayurvedic Medicine tradition for thousands of years. Recent research has shown Guggul to be helpful in lowering blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels.When making dietary and lifestyle changes such as including supplements to support heart health remember to maintain the right perspective and focus on what\u00a0you can do\u00a0and what\u00a0you can have\u00a0instead of what you cannot.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) recently updated their cholesterol guidelines to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases (Stone, November 12, 2013). This is the first major change","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":13545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-heart-health"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12201,"href":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/12201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.personanutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}