Medication isn’t the only way to fight cholesterol. You can help control your levels by eating foods that are linked to decreasing cholesterol. Medical News Today lists the following scales as an indicator of high cholesterol levels. If you’re above 200 mg/dl, you should consider changing your eating habits.

Total Cholesterol: Milligrams/Deciliter (mg/dL)

• Less than 200 mg/dL – Desirable
• 200 to 239 mg/dL – Borderline High
• 240 mg/dL and Above – High

Medical News Today also lists the following scale as an indicator of high LDL (low density lipoprotein) cholesterol, which is often referred to as the “bad” type of cholesterol. It’s important to keep these levels low as well.

LDL Cholesterol Millimoles/Liter (mmol/liter)

• Less than 5 mmol/liter – Optimum
• 5 to 6.4 mmol/liter – Mildly High
• 6.5 to 7.8 mmol/liter – Moderately High
• 7.9 mmol/liter and Above – Very High

You can keep both of these numbers at a good level with a low cholesterol diet and LDL reduction. Here are a few foods that can help get the job done.

Spinach

Sautéed and raw are the most common ways to eat and prepare spinach. Saute and eat it as a side to a protein like salmon or chicken. Then anytime you can, substitute lettuce, which has few nutritional values, for spinach. And if raw or sautéed spinach isn’t your thing, blend it into a fruit smoothie in small quantities.

Oats

Check the labels of your favorite cereals and select the one with the highest amount of natural oats. Or go big with a bowl of straight oatmeal in the morning. You can also make oats a side item by tossing them in a cup of yogurt or a smoothie or make them the main ingredient in oatmeal cookies and snackbars.

Red Wine

Red wine is good for fighting cholesterol but it must be done in moderate. One glass a day is recommended for woman, and two for men. When sitting down for dinner and a drink, select a glass of red over a white wine, a beer, or a cocktail.

Lentils

If you want to sneak some lentils into your diet, find soup and casserole recipes that incorporate them. Or mix them with rice and stuff them into vegetables like peppers. Or you can simply add them to a salad or bake them into a loaf of bread.

Tea

Oolong tea is said to fight against cholesterol as well as obesity, diabetes, and eczema. It can also boost the immune system giving it an added bonus.

Chocolate

Dark chocolate is the best type of chocolate if you’re looking for health benefits. To get the health benefits of eating chocolate, you can’t overdo it. Eat a piece of chocolate a day, not an entire candy bar.

Avocado

Avocados can be crushed into guacamole and added to pretty much any food. Avocados also make great replacements for mayo on sandwiches and in egg salads. They’re tasty in salads or sushi and dishes both hot and cold, making the avocado recipes almost endless.

Garlic

Garlic is a seasoning that can make your food full of flavor and cholesterol levels better. Try garlic roasting your proteins or mixing garlic to make a spread for bread and pita chips. Or chop up garlic and add it on top of side dishes or in soups.

Salmon

Salmon can be paired with a few other items on this list to make a full meal (with sautéed spinach, in a salad with avocado, served over lentils). Bake the salmon over a cedar plank to get the best flavor out of this healthy, fatty fish.

Fruits

Certain fruits can also help lower cholesterol levels. Look for citrus fruits, grapefruits and oranges, as well as grapes, strawberries, and apples when finding healthy choices.

Edamame

Edamame, or fresh green soybeans are a great steamed snack. Or they can be added to side dishes, salads, stews, and stir-frys.

Nuts

Snack healthy; put away the chips and reach for walnuts, cashews, and almonds instead. These mixed nuts fight cholesterol and are a good source of vitamin E, magnesium, and phytochemicals that are linked to a healthy heart.

What Not To Eat

These 12 foods are easy to prepare and mix into your regular eating habits. Make sure to select those healthy items instead of foods that raise your cholesterol:

• Egg Yolks
• Butter
• Shrimp
• Cheese
• Fast Foods
• Processed Meats

So if your cholesterol levels are getting a bit too high, considering changing your diet and incorporating these 12 foods that lower cholesterol.

Author Bio: Samantha Ducati is a loving wife and a mother of 2. She loves reading and writing so much that during her free time she writes about anything and believes that a pen is mightier than a sword.

Dr. James Stein, MD from the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison, praised the JUPITER study for exposing the fact that current therapeutic LDL-cholesterol levels are not only arbitrary, but are in fact a poor indicator of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. ?Most patients with heart attacks have normal cholesterol values,? he stated. With the cholesterol theory crumbling the industry is under intense pressure to come up with a new risk factor, and one that can be treated with the same statin drugs they have invested so much money in. Enter Dr. Ridker and C-reactive protein (CRP). Ridker has been pushing treating CRP with statins for years. But is CRP a risk factor? A National Panel on CRP found no evidence treating CRP levels will improve survival rates (www.urmc.rochester.edu/pr/News/story.cfm?id=182). Elevated CRP levels are associated with many things including; anger, stress, arthritis, cancer, lupus, pneumonia, TB, oral contraceptive use, pregnancy, heart attacks, surgery, trauma, intense exercise, etc. It?s a marker for disease, not the cause. But since statins lower CRP levels slightly, you can count on CRP becoming the new cholesterol. The public will be made to fear CRP, be tested for it, and be put on dangerous statins to lower it. What a racket.

Too little of one type of cholesterol has been linked to memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease.

Scientists studied more than 3,500 civil servants to investigate how levels of HDL or “good” cholesterol were associated with memory. HDL cholesterol can influence the formation of the beta-amyloid “plaques” that are a distinctive feature in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

Higher levels of HDL are also believed to protect against damage to blood supply caused by the narrowing of the arteries.

After the five-year study period, the researchers found that people with low levels of HDL were 53 percent more likely to suffer memory loss than people with the highest levels of HDL.

Those with impaired memory are at an increased risk of developing dementia later in life.

Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and?Vascular Biol. 2008 Aug;28(8)

By the mid 1950?s, CVD became our number one killer and remains the leading killer today. It was around this time that the lipid hypothesis started to gain popularity. The lipid hypothesis, which was proposed by Ancel Keys in the late 1950?s, is a theory claiming there is a direct relationship between the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet and the incidence of CVD. This theory however, is simplistic and unfounded; the biggest health scam in American history.

Today in the United States one person will die from CVD every 37 seconds.6 This year in the U.S. an estimated 1.26 million people will have a new or recurrent heart attack, and just short of half will die.7 Approximately 80,000,000 people or more than 25% of The U.S. population has one or more forms of cardiovascular disease.7 In 2002 CVD mortality was nearly 60% of ?total mortality? in the U.S.6 This means that out of 2.4 million deaths from all causes, CVD was listed as a primary cause on about 1.4 million death certificates. CVD causes more deaths than the next 7 causes combined. It?s safe to say CVD had a meteoric rise from the 1930?s to the 1950?s to become number one and to this day the incidence is still rising. (We’re a Fat Unhealthy Nation. part I)

Did you know…

…cholesterol is a substance vital to the health of all cells in your body?

…your body produces 3 to 4 times more cholesterol than you eat?

…when you decrease your consumption the body increases it’s production and visa-versa?

…despite the same amounts of cholesterol flowing through them, veins never become sclerotic?

…arteries that pass through the bony channels of the skull and the few branches that pass through heart muscle never become sclerotic?

…studies of the hearts of people who have died from heart attacks showed approximately 1/5th of the victims had no evidence of coronary atherosclerosis?

…oxidized cholesterol is what accumulates in vessels not normal cholesterol?

…3/4’s of the lipids found in plaque is polyunsaturated?

…in Japan more people die of cerebral hemorrhage than in most other countries, and is greatest in those with the lowest cholesterol levels.

…there is no correlation between saturated fat consumption and cardiovascular disease? In fact, many societies have decreased their animal fat consumption with a corresponding increase in cardiovascular disease.

…there are countless scientific and observable contradictions to the Lipid Hypothesis? Only one scientific contradiction is needed to disprove a hypothesis.

Do your homework and judge for yourself.

According to NewsMax Health Alerts, the five foods proven to fight cardiovascular disease are:

1. Spinach — Spinach is high in folate which helps prevent the accumulation of homoscysteine in the blood. Homoscysteine is a major risk factor for heart disease.
2. Salmon — Salmon is high in omega-3 fatty acids which reduce inflammation and help prevent plaque from blocking arteries.
3. Tomatoes — Tomatoes are rich in lycopene which lowers cholesterol.
4. Oatmeal — Oatmeal is a great source of soluble fiber which absorbs excess cholesterol and removes it from your body.
5. Pomegranates — Pomegranates are rich in polyphenols, which are antioxidants that keep hearts healthy by neutralizing cell-damaging free radicals, and may also reduce LDL “bad” cholesterol.

The above foods although nutritious,??are going to do very little in the way of warding off heart disease.? There are other foods wich are literally poisons that need to be avoided if one is trying to eat heart healthy.? Conversely, there are also foods and nutrients which you need to add to your diet that are much more heart healthy than the above list.

Despite what you have learned, high cholesterol is not your enemy. Our enemy in this battle against heart disease is vegetable oils.? That’s right, the very same oils that are promoted as heart healthy.? Studies using rabbits in the early 1900’s are often touted as proof positive that a diet high in cholesterol, which raise cholesterol, promote heart disease.? If you look up these studies you’ll find that the researchers used corn oil or partially hydrogenated oil.?

One study used corn oil with the same amount of cholesterol people normally consume.? The rabbits in this study like all the others developed rampant atherosclerosis.? As we’ve known for decades through past, as well as recent studies, vegetable oils and hydrogenated oils facilitate atherosclerosis without adding cholesterol.? Only God knows how many people have died or suffered as a result of the mass marketing of vegetable oils as heart healthy over the last 7 decades.