Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation

You CAN Lower Your Cholesterol

Harvard Health Publications
HEALTHbeat

At a certain age, people tend to begin tracking their cholesterol numbers as closely as investments in the stock market. Of course, with cholesterol, there’s one important difference: Falling numbers are usually good. Since the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) issued its cholesterol guidelines in 2004, a number of studies have provided evidence that when it comes to LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and overall cholesterol levels, the lower the better.

Your body needs cholesterol. Men can’t produce testosterone without it, and women can’t produce estrogen. Your intestines can’t digest food without cholesterol, and your cells can’t create their outer coating, or membrane. So, cholesterol isn’t bad. What is bad is having too much and carrying it in the bloodstream in particles that deposit it in the wrong places. Most people’s bodies already make more cholesterol than they need, and they could stand to cut back on foods that boost cholesterol levels, such as those high in saturated fats and trans fats.

Regardless of where it comes from, excess LDL in your blood gets deposited in the walls of your arteries, the blood vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood to your heart and brain. The accumulation of LDL causes the arteries to narrow. The buildup can become unstable, which ultimately can lead to heart attacks and strokes.

High cholesterol affects about 17% of Americans ages 20 and older, and atherosclerotic heart disease is the single leading cause of death and disability in the developed world. The good news is that for most people, living a heart-healthy lifestyle to lower your LDL cholesterol can help prevent heart disease.

In the early days of the cholesterol era, researchers naturally assumed that dietary cholesterol (the cholesterol in such foods as eggs, red meat, and dairy products) was the main villain in elevated blood cholesterol, and so they recommended that people stay away from cholesterol-rich foods. Eggs fell from grace as a healthful food.

As it turns out, dietary cholesterol isn’t the only food component responsible for raising the level of cholesterol in your blood, or even the most important. Another key culprit is dietary fat — particularly saturated and trans fats. Saturated fats are found in foods such as meats, whole-fat dairy products, and eggs. Trans fats occur naturally in meat, but today people usually get this type of fat in an artificial form contained in hydrogenated oils, used in margarine and many commercial baked goods and processed foods.

Diet isn’t the only cause of high cholesterol. Your cholesterol levels reflect a combination of factors, including your genetic makeup. For some who are genetically predisposed, the amount of cholesterol they eat has relatively little impact on the amount that circulates in their blood. For most people, though, levels of blood cholesterol are closely tied to the amounts of fat and cholesterol in their food.