One of the most common questions I get is how can I lower my cholesterol
It's a great question and important one and speaking of questions
What percentage of adults in the US would you say have high cholesterol? Is it 10 percent?
25, 40 or 50? pick one
The answer is coming up. if you said 50
You got it right about half of the adults in the US have high cholesterol, a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease
Which is the number one cause of death in the Western world
it's so common, half of adults have it, and so dangerous and
Yet it's so easy to avoid and even fix for most of us cholesterol can be kept very low
With no drugs just with nutrition
I actually made a whole video about this last year where I showed my blood results and how they changed with diet today
We're gonna go more in depth into those dietary changes
Step-by-step, we're gonna cover everything
You need to know in order to do it yourself, if you want to all simple actionable steps, let's go
There are three things in our food that raise our cholesterol. The first one is drumroll
cholesterol, duh
right the more we eat the higher our blood levels and we'll come back to this in a second the other two are
Saturated fat and trans fats. So the bottom line in order to lower our cholesterol
We want to minimize or avoid foods that are very high in these three nutrients not exactly rocket science
And what are those foods? Ok, little test of your knowledge
See if you can order these from least to most saturated fat content
So we got chicken breast eggs cheddar and salmon. Alright, we'll line them up. Take your best guess
We'll check the answers in a second first. Let's look at cholesterol. It's found in all animal foods and only in animal foods
So if the food comes from an animal it has cholesterol and if it doesn't it doesn't it's that simple
Here's a visual for example a 3 ounce steak has 67 milligrams of cholesterol
What about chicken 3 ounces of chicken legs is actually worse than the steak
A lot of people don't realize this we're told chicken is lean and healthy and that's no skin
Nothing added no butter on top or anything like that. Just the meat on the links. What about chicken breast?
That's lean and healthy, right? Well, it's leaner than the legs but it's still worse than the steak cholesterol wise
What about fish? Well, tuna
Is better but salmon, not so much. What about dairy? Well milk looks a lot better but
Cheese is worse than steak and butter even worse. What about eggs?
Well, we all know eggs are packed with cholesterol not breaking news
That's only about an egg and a half to three ounces
You'd need to eat 5 3 ounce takes to get that much cholesterol
And of course beans grains fruits and vegetables all down here at zero by definition
Plant foods have no cholesterol. So does that mean I can never eat anything from an animal ever again?
No, we're not dictating behaviors here. We're just looking at information so we can make an educated choice
ok second item saturated fat
It's actually even more important eating saturated fat raises our blood cholesterol levels even more than eating cholesterol itself
Saturated fat is a little bit everywhere, but it's concentrated in animal foods and some plant foods
Like for example coconut and some oils here's a visual for saturated fat the 3 ounce steak has 5 grams of saturated fat
But by trimming all the fat carefully you can bring that down to one and a half
Three ounces worth a chicken leg or chicken breast not a huge difference
Tuna a lot better salmon worse than the steak milk about the same as the steak cheese
No, comment off the charts butter
No
Comment even worse than the cheese and egg
About twice as much as the steak although compared to the cheese and the butter looks like lettuce
Now most plant foods like grains beans fruit greens, etc are down here
But saturated fat is high in some plant foods for reference cheddar has 11 times more saturated fat than steak per ounce
But coconut oil has 50 times more per ounce
Even just a tablespoon of coconut oil has ten times more saturated fat than the three ounce steak
so it's not just
animal foods like steaks and chicken and dairy and eggs that we got to watch out for if we want to keep our cholesterol under
Control things like coconut oil can also raise it
So I've had people tell me I got rid of all the animal products and my cholesterol came down, but it's still too high
Yeah
Cuz there are some other factors that's what this video is for give you the whole rundown
Full picture so you can get this handled. So if you're committed to lowering your cholesterol if you've already made that decision you're on
You just want some actionable steps. You just want a straight answer
What exactly do I do to get there to get this handled it helps to have this visual?
So we're not guessing and eating randomly and wondering why we're not getting the results. We want knowledge is power
Okay, last but not least trans fats
They're mainly found in processed and junk foods things like snacks fried food commercial baked foods
Margarine and some oils now if you're in the u.s
There's currently a ban on trans fats
so they're not not as much as an issue as they used to be but
The bans not 100% they give the companies a lot of time to adapt
So in the meantime, these products are still out there in the market containing trans fats
And we're still buying them in eating trans fats here and there another loophole the law stipulates zero trans fats per serving
But it lets the companies round it down as long as it's below 0.5 grams per serving
It lets the company round it down to zero
The problem is that adds up quickly if you're eating something like potato chips
It's easy to have several servings in one sitting right and if each serving has for example point four grams of trans fats
It'll add up quickly
And before you know it you've had several grams of trans fats one or two or more and that then becomes meaningful
for cholesterol levels so bottom line
our main dietary sources of cholesterol saturated fat and trans fats are animal foods and
Highly processed foods including some oils on the flip side
We have unprocessed plant foods with the lowest amounts of saturated fat and trans fats. And of course zero cholesterol
So the strategy to lower our cholesterol is obvious less animal and processed more vegetable
unprocessed more natural if you must eat animal foods give preference to the ones with lower amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol like we saw
maybe some tuna here or there or some low-fat dairy and
Avoid that other stuff that's more concentrated in those problem nutrients the red meat definitely the process dairy like cheese and butter
The chicken we saw is not that different from red meat. Unfortunately and the very fatty fish like salmon same thing
Here's a brand new study just came out this month
Replacing red meat with plant protein things like beans and lentils lowers LDL. That's the bad cholesterol, but replacing it with a chicken made
No difference and fish made it even worse
so those results may be really surprising to a lot of people but less so if you're looking at saturated fat and cholesterol content like
We just did now. I know some of these messages are not really what we want to hear
We've eaten these who's their whole lives I get that but these are the facts
It's a simple idea and it actually makes sense once you think about it
So let's talk about how much how much should we be replacing? How far should we go?
Well that's going to depend on a couple of factors
It's going to depend on how willing we are to change our habits and it's going to depend on our individual
Physiology, some people can see results with modest changes others require more drastic measures
So start playing with those replacements and see how your blood work changes consider replacing some of the steak and chicken
With plant protein like beans and lentils and reducing the cheese and eggs. Maybe try oatmeal for breakfast instead of eggs
For example, maybe I've a kind of spread instead of butter
So give it a shot see how it works for you and avoid too much oil
especially coconut oil consider replacing with less saturated forms
like olive oil or even better go for non oily alternatives like cooking with vegetable stock and
seasoning food with herbes and spices instead of oily dressings
Tahini and hummus can also be great alternatives
If you're one of the lucky ones then a modest change might be enough to bring your cholesterol down to normal
But if it doesn't don't get discouraged, it's very common
The way this works is in the beginning the more cholesterol. You eat the higher your blood levels
But eventually it starts to flatten out
So if your blood levels are pretty high
Eating a little bit less may not make a big difference in blood levels
You need to keep reducing how much you're eating until you get to the ramp phase over here
And then you will start seeing some serious results
so that's the gist of the foods to avoid in order to get your cholesterol in check now for most people
This will be enough to get you where you want to be and where is that below 200 milligrams per deciliter
total cholesterol is
Considered normal, so that's a good first goal
If you want to go even lower it does deliver additional benefits all the way to under 150
Where you're essentially immune from heart disease for LDL the bad cholesterol
Below 100 is normal and below 70 or 75 is ideal if these tips get you to your goal. Whatever that is. Fantastic
I'm let it helped but for some of us even avoiding all of these problems foods
may not be enough and your cholesterol may still be a bit high and that's where we gotta bring out the big guns and
No, I'm not talking about drugs yet. We're still on the topic of eating healthy food
That's where particular foods come in that actively lower your cholesterol, and we're gonna cover those in detail in depth on the next video
So make sure to check that out