Prevention Essentials

Prevention Essentials

In your control

• Check cholesterol levels every year at age 40 and up.
• Cut fried foods, red meat, dairy products, and saturated fats from your diet.
• Eat more fish.
• Exercise regularly to clean cholesterol out of the arteries.
• Practice stress reduction.

The sooner you start a healthy routine including "the proper low-fat, high soluble fiber diet with sufficient exercise, the sooner you can benefit from improved cholesterol levels and improved health," says Susan Mitchell, Ph.D., R.D., ThirdAge nutrition expert and author of "Eat to Stay Young," (Kensington, 2000). A high cholesterol patient, Mitchell notes, is never cured: managing cholesterol is a lifelong treatment. And a low-fat, high fiber diet and exercise are always necessary regardless of what medication a person takes.

Step one

Eliminating foods that contain or are prepared with saturated fats should be your first step. The number one foods to avoid? "Anything that is deep fried," says Marlene Lesson, M.S., R.D., L.D.N., nutrition director at Structure House, a residential weight loss facility in Durham, North Carolina. "Also, foods containing hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils are the enemy. These include margarine, pastries, packaged cookies, crackers, potato chips, and other snack foods." Stop eating processed foods and read product labels before you buy, Lesson suggests. Doing so will give you maximum control over your fat intake.

Other foods to give up include cheese and other dairy products, poultry skin (remove it before eating the meat) and red meat other than top round and edge of round.

Besides helping prevent heart disease, "cutting out fat can give your brain and mental faculties an extra edge," according to Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D., a Tucson, Arizona, anesthesiologist and author of "Brain Longevity," (Warner Books, 2000). "Fat intake impairs cerebral circulation by clogging arteries with 'bad' LDL cholesterol, and LDL decreases elasticity of the brain's blood vessels," he says. "As soon as free radicals from fat reach your neurons," Dr. Khalsa explains, they start killing them off. Neurons are highly vulnerable to free radical damage from fat, partly because neurons consist of approximately 60 percent fat. "You can help protect your brain and heart and promote peak mental performance by eating a low-fat diet," he says.

Step two

Once you've reduced the fat in your foods, increase the good foods that can help with cholesterol management. Foods to enjoy include soy products such as tofu, soybeans, soy milk, soy protein powder, soy/veggie burgers, and soy nuts. People with elevated cholesterol who add a daily 25 grams of soy protein to their diets see their total cholesterol fall by about 9 percent and their LDL cholesterol, the bad, artery-clogging kind, by as much as 15 percent. When you consider that every 1 percent drop lowers heart disease risk by 2 to 3 percent, soy-based meals look even more tempting.

Even if your cholesterol numbers are normal, adding a little soy to your diet can keep them within that range. It seems only natural that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently gave food manufacturers the go-ahead to trumpet soy's cholesterol-lowering benefits right on food labels.

Tofu can be prepared with vegetables in stir-fry dishes, soy beans and soy nuts are tasty snacks, and meat-eating urges can be satisfied with soy hot dogs and even soy pepperoni. For breakfast, try soy milk and cereal: one cup of soy milk has about seven grams of soy protein. A fruit juice shake made from soy protein powder can also be a heart-healthy alternative to a milk shake or candy bar.

Lesson adds that eating 20 to 35 grams of fiber very day can also help lower cholesterol. To round out a cholesterol-lowering diet, eat:

• fruits
• vegetables
• lentils and dried beans
• fish with Omega-3 oils such as salmon, sardines, or mackerel
• flaxseed
• oatmeal
• olive oil

Step three

Physical activity can greatly affect your cholesterol levels. By exercising, you raise your metabolism and burn calories, losing fat weight. Exercise, while lowering total cholesterol, increases the good HDL cholesterol, which helps prevent plaque from forming on the walls of the arteries.

Step four

Practice relaxation and stress-reduction techniques. Fatigue, anger, and distress can raise your body's adrenaline levels, causing cholesterol to rise.

Step five

Sometimes diet, exercise, and stress reduction just aren't enough to get cholesterol into the safe zone. In terms of medication, physicians prescribe statins, which are able to control an enzyme in the body that is responsible for the manufacture of lipids, also known as fats. This control process reduces the body's production of cholesterol. "There are many long-term studies that show that statins are very effective and help prevent stroke and heart disease," says Dr. Hirsch. Know that possible side effects of statins include muscle pains and elevation of liver function.

The statins help control triglyceride levels, lower LDL or "bad cholesterol," increase the HDL or "good cholesterol," and lower total cholesterol. Statins may offer other vital health benefits, as well: three recent medical studies involving almost 100,00 people suggest that statins may prevent brittle bones. Participants using statins reduced their risk of fractures by about 70 percent in one study, and by 45 percent in the other two.

Key term

• fiber