There’s a bunch of stuff on the internet regarding cholesterol and reducing its levels, but I’d rather see what the T-Nation folks say. My brother has high cholesterol, and when I say high, I mean (as he described it) “off the fucking charts”. Turns out my other brother is not low either in the cholesterol stakes.
I haven’t tested myself recently but I’ve always been low, and I exercise and watch what I eat; two things they don’t do. I’m going to get tested to make sure I’ve no problems, but I don’t anticipate trouble.
Now that they’ve had the wake-up call, they’re probably more susceptible to becoming T-Men, which I plan to use to my full advantage in pushing them to start training. However, most of the dogma available right now to reduce cholesterol says no red meat, no eggs, etc., etc. - things that I don’t think are true, and that fly in the face of just about every dietary guideline published on this site. This, coupled with the “Cool Tip” from the other day about low cholesterol not being the be-all and end-all, makes for some difficult arguments.
So, what I’m looking for is T-Nation dietary advice, with a view to controlling cholesterol to manageable levels. More to the point, solid info as to why red meat and eggs won’t kill you would be good. All tips, links and suggestions would be appreciated.
Hardly a clinical study case, however my friend went from having cholesterol of 350 to around 190 in only about 4 months by simply exercising and using the Zone diet.
For those of you that don’t know, the Zone diet is one of the few mainstream diets that seems reasonable by T-man standards. If you compare it to several of the diets on the site, it’s not so different. Basically it’s just a clean eating diet.
It’s been a couple years since I had mine tested, but since I began working out, my chol. levels have always been excellent no matter what I’ve eaten. (Before I began working out my level was around 250).
May the powers of persuasion be with you when convincing your brothers to work out
"Stearic acid raises HDL levels but does little or nothing to LDL. And then there
are trans fatty acids, which raise LDL, just like saturated fat, but also lower HDL. Today,
none of this is controversial, although it has yet to be reflected in any Food Guide
Pyramid.
To understand where this complexity can lead in a simple example, consider a steak–to
be precise, a porterhouse, select cut, with a half-centimeter layer of fat, the nutritional
constituents of which can be found in the Nutrient Database for Standard Reference at the
USDA Web site. After broiling, this porterhouse reduces to a serving of almost equal
parts fat and protein. Fifty-one percent of the fat is monounsaturated, of which virtually
all (90%) is oleic acid, the same healthy fat that’s in olive oil. Saturated fat constitutes
45% of the total fat, but a third of that is stearic acid, which is, at the very least, harmless.
The remaining 4% of the fat is polyunsaturated, which also improves cholesterol levels.
In sum, well over half–and perhaps as much as 70%–of the fat content of a porterhouse
will improve cholesterol levels compared to what they would be if bread, potatoes, or
pasta were consumed instead. The remaining 30% will raise LDL but will also raise
HDL. All of this suggests that eating a porterhouse steak rather than carbohydrates might
actually improve heart disease risk, although no nutritional authority who hasn’t written a
high-fat diet book will say this publicly."
When I was younger and dumber, I used to go out for lunch with the office gang almost every day.
Damn, we wrote a program that would randomly pick where we would go every day, how retarded is that?
Anyway, eating burgers and fries, drinking plenty of booze (after work) and getting just enough exercise to hold my head upright in my nice reclining chair, I had the highest cholesterol in the place.
Nowadays I’m fine (as per recent array of baseline tests). So, partying like an ass, eating shit food and getting zero exercise is the antithesis of what needs to be done to have good cholesterol levels.
As said before, hardly scientific or anything, but a healthy lifestyle and reasonable food choices goes a long way. I’m sure there are supplements and things that would help too.
I’ve heard a few times, from articles or on tv, that lowering your cholesterol too much may increase your risks of heart disease. Supposedly, the main cause of heart disease is inflamation. Inflamation causes arteries to become weak and crack. Cholesterol, supposedly, clogs around the arteries to prevent the arteries from bursting. Not a doctor, but it seems to make sense to me.
Oats-One large bowl of Oatmeal daily (2 oat bran muffins per day as well)
Aerobic exercise at least three times per week. Do it right you won’t lose muscle.
Lower your intake of saturated fats.
However, cholesterol is not the big culprit everyone thinks. Half the people who die of heart disease have high cholesterol the other half have normal or low cholesterol!
Cholesterol drugs are a great way for drug companies to make money. It is a multi billion dollar market.
