Insulin stimulates the body’s cholesterol making machinery into gear.
This is one of the most important points that will be made on this site.
What causes insulin? Elevated blood sugar!
What causes elevated blood sugar? Mainly Simple carbohydrates!
Simple carbohydrates take many forms and the worst are bread (all forms), most breakfast cereals and basically anything made from wheat!
Obviously it is important to know the effect on our body of what we are eating (Glycemic index, Glycemic load and insulin load).
By weight, all children’s breakfast cereals are 30 to 50 percent sugar. Most dry boxed commercial breakfast cereals are high glycemic - they raise blood sugar.

So it is apparent that cholesterol is affected by what we eat.
However dietary cholesterol (cholesterol in what we eat) has no impact on the body’s cholesterol reading!
In short, eating cholesterol will not affect your cholesterol levels. For example there is a myth that eating eggs (which contain cholesterol) will raise cholesterol levels. This is not true.
“Cholesterol in food has no affect on cholesterol in blood and we’ve known that all along”  Professor Ancel Keys, father of the low fat diet.

Insulin and Fat

It is important to note that the obesity epidemic worldwide coincided with the introduction of low fat options. Low fat combined with high carbohydrates produces high insulin (fat storage) and high cholesterol.
However, if you ate a diet of almost 90% fat your cholesterol would probably drop as there would not be enough insulin available to power the cholesterol making machinery!!

Cholesterol and your Doctor

Most GPs will prescribe medication to control and stabilise cholesterol levels. Most medications have a side effect of stripping the body of essential micro nutrients. Medicating for cholesterol management does not get to the cause of why cholesterol is high in the first place.
A full diet analysis is required and this is often over looked by many health care practitioners.

Sugar

Sugar reduces HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol), increasing the risk for heart disease.
If carbohydrates are the cause of high insulin levels in the general population than eating a lower carbohydrate diet will be beneficial health-wise.

How does a Low Carb Diet Effect Cholesterol

• A low carb diet frequently raises HDL (good) cholesterol
• A low carb diet often changes the particle size of the LDL (bad cholesterol) molecules from the B type (atherogenic) to the A type.

How Does A high Carb Diet Affect Blood Fats and Cholesterol

A high carbohydrate diet is associated with elevated triglycerides (TG), which, in turn, is associated with depressed levels of HDL. Depressed HDL is a potent risk factor for diabetes and coronary heart disease. A Harvard study verified that people with the highest TG and the lowest HDL (top quartile) were 16 times more likely to die of heart disease than people with the lowest TG and highest HDL (lowest quartile).   

How to Effectively Lower Cholesterol Naturally

1. Have your diet analysed and modified to reduce the blood sugar response (insulin response)
   1. Go LOW CARB
2. Start Exercising
3. Stop smoking
4. Reduce your body fat if it is too high
5. Add fibre to your diet
   1. Reduces intestinal cholesterol absorption
   2. Blunts the glucose and insulin response of food
   3. For every gram of soluble fibre added there is a decrease in LDL cholesterol of .22 mg/Dl
6. Decrease saturated fats and increases essential fats
   1. Add in Omega 3 Fatty Acids (EPA/DHA) (Good fish oil)
   2. Nuts
7. Add more Green Vegetables to your diet (plant sterols)
8. Take Vitamin E
9. Take Green Tea
10. Take a good multivitamin containing NIACIN (vitamin B3) and Chromium
11. Take Vitamin C
12. Take Panthetine
13. Take Resveratrol

As can be seen from the above cholesterol is manageable without taking medication. For more information on this please contact me by email or telephone.