How To Lower Your Cholesterol To Improve Your Overall Health

It's important that you learn how to lower cholesterol by adjusting your eating habits (I did say diet) to improve your overall health and lower your risk of developing certain diseases. There are two choices to lower cholesterol. The first is making adjustments to your lifestyle which includes medium exercise, stop smoking and eating habits. The second choice is prescription drugs.

We're a society that has become accustomed to "Fixing" problems – including health problems quick. Since the advent of penicillin, we as a society believe that every ailment can be cured quickly and easily with a visit to the doctor.

When we visit the doctor, he'll pull something out of his black medical bag of tricks – a shot, a prescription, something -that will put us back on the road to health with a minimum amount of work on our part and surprisingly, nine out of ten times, it works.

For the longest time this approach seemed to be working. But then after some long-term use of these medications, we also realized that they came with some hefty adverse side effects.

As individuals we have the most control over our health, for the most part you can change the course of your health whenever you desire. You just have to want to improve your wellbeing and be determined to do it. We're not used to thinking much about our habits, ways to lower cholesterol and may be at a loss of exactly what steps initially to take to start knocking down those high cholesterol numbers.

You can take any number of roads to start. The best is through lifestyle change. Changing you eating habits (did say diet) is undoubtedly the wisest first step you can take on how to lower cholesterol. Changing your eating habit may sound extreme and boring but you can still enjoy a wide variety of food. In fact, when you begin eating for your health, you may discover that you're enjoying your new menu far better than you old fast-food, processed and packaged food.

You Ask, But Where Do I Begin?

Let's start with the Fats … The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.

Your body needs fat to function properly. It's your source of energy, but it's only one of three. The other two are proteins and carbohydrates. Too much of anything isn't healthy and this hold true when it comes to fats but, in the world of fats telling the good guys from the bad guys can be difficult.

Saturated Fat – The Bad Fat: Saturated fat is found mostly in animal products, such as red meat, poultry, butter, whole milk and can raise your blood cholesterol levels as well as increasing your risk of developing heart disease. It's also been associated with a whole host of other degenerative, aging related diseases. Processed foods are also high in saturated fat and cholesterol. Processed meats, like deli meats, sausage, hot dogs, bologna, and salami are among the worst offenders. (Try to limit) your consumption of these as much as possible.

Unsaturated Fat – The Healthier of the two major categories which include monounsaturated fat and polyunsaturated variety. Oils that are rich in monounsaturated fat include olive, peanut and canola plus foods like avocados and just about all nuts. The polyunsaturated variety of vegetable oils includes corn, safflower, sunflower, soy and cottonseed.

The Best For The Last: Omega-3 Fatty Acids: Found in (fish like salmon), and a few other foods as will. These are the ones that seem to be amazingly healthy.

The Ugly -Trans-Fatty Acids Eat At Your Own Risk: this fat, the only man-made fat, is formed by adding hydrogen to vegetable oil and is considered the largest mistake in food history. Trans-fatty acids are found in French fries and (oh my goodness) donuts, to name just a few.

Depending on the type you choose, unsaturated fat can help improve your overall health, lower cholesterol and lower your risk of developing certain diseases.