How diet affects blood cholesterol
A common question that's asked is, "Why should I worry about how my diet affects my blood cholesterol?" To name a few reasons:
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- Your diet can either build good cholesterol or bad cholesterol in your body. Good cholesterol, or HDL for short, will strengthen your heart, help to pump hot, red, flowing, healthy blood through your veins, and give you more energy and uplift in general and better sleep and a better attitude towards life and the world.
- On the other hand, your diet can affect your blood cholesterol negatively. Your diet can affect your blood cholesterol so badly that you feel tired, depressed, low, immobile. Your diet can effect your blood cholesterol to the point that you suffer heart disease - a heart attack, a stroke, paralysis, even death. Bad cholesterol is known as LDL for short.
- To get a good picture of what LDL is doing to your veins, imagine your frying pan after you cook a lovely, steamy, enormous breakfast of bacon and eggs and fried potatoes. It tastes really good going down, and it sure smells good, but have you ever noticed the white, pasty gunk that dries in the bottom of the pan if you leave it on the stove too long? Well, that's exactly the stuff that's forming and hardening in your veins if you eat too much of that sort of food.
- On the other hand, think of a pan of vegetables cooked in olive oil. The pan stays smooth afterward, slick, the oil still sloshes back and forth no matter how long you leave it out. That is the sort of feeling you want your veins to have - smooth and slick and easily-flowing.
- A diet high in natural foods and whole grains will leave you healthier, saner, and much, much happier. Natural foods are foods that grow out of the earth, such as fruits and vegetables and beans. These foods can be eaten plentifully without harmful side-effects. They will break down in your system in such a way that you are strengthened and uplifted. They will lower bad blood cholesterol and raise good blood cholesterol. Eating a diet that includes lots of the right foods is like putting the right fuel in your car. You'd never purposely fill your car with the wrong fuel - it wouldn't drive anymore. The same principle applies to your body. You want to get as many miles as you can out of it.
- A diet high in animal products, including egg yolk, cheese, whole milk, and meat, and a diet high in fried foods such doughnuts and processed foods like crackers and cookies and cakes, will definitely slow your body down and perhaps shut it down altogether. The key is to practice moderation in all things. You don't need to become a vegetarian, but you do need to choose the leanest cuts of meat, and eat more chicken and fish. You could decide, from time to time, to use beans as a meat-substitute. You could try just eating the white of the egg; low-fat milk; low-fat cheese; low-fat cream.
- Your diet, more than anything else, will affect your blood cholesterol for good or for ill. And there's no need to despair, a healthy diet isn't equivalent to starving. The main thing to remember is that you want to get energetic and full on healthy foods instead of sluggish and full on unhealthy ones. Picture that gross, icky pan, with its gobs of white fat, when you're tempted too indulge too much in the wrong kinds of foods. You don't want that stuff clogging up your veins. Choose a healthy diet that will affect your blood cholesterol positively, and live a long and happy life.
