s of heart disease were among people who had cholesterol levels between 150 and 200 mg/dL. To truly protect yourself from heart disease, you should try to keep your cholesterol below 150 mg/dL. The best way to do this is to eliminate animal products from your diet, thus eliminating your intake of extra cholesterol, and to keep your diet low-fat as well.
Sometimes when people reduce their total cholesterol, their HDL level goes down to a point that concerns some doctors. However, this is not something to get too caught up on. Though there is a correlation between having higher HDL levels and having a lower risk of heart disease, this is not necessarily the case if your total cholesterol is below 150 mg/dL. To put it simply, it makes sense that the more HDL garbage trucks you have, the more LDL garbage that can be picked up—but the less garbage you have floating around in your bloodstream, the fewer garbage trucks you need to collect and dispose of it.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States—one in every four deaths is from heart disease. The good news is that this is very preventable if people make healthy diet and lifestyle choices. As Dr. Esselstyn likes to say, “Heart disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never ever exist, and when it does exist, it need never ever progress.” Heart disease is one thing in life that we have control over. We do not have to live in fear. We can prevent atherosclerosis from ever developing, stop it in its tracks, and in some cases, even reverse it. And all of this begins with cholesterol.
Eat plants and make your heart happy <3
Esselstyn, C. B. (2009). Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. New York: Avery.
National Institutes of Health (2012). What is Cholesterol? Retrieved from:
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Cholesterol and Heart Disease.
Retrieved from: http://www.pcrm.org/health/health-topics/cholesterol-