If you're among the 14 percent of American adults with high
cholesterol, you've no doubt received the standard diet advice: lose
weight; limit your intake of cholesterol-rich foods like eggs, butter,
cheese, red meat and shellfish; and lower your intake of saturated fats
from animal foods and hydrogenated plant oils.
[See Plant-Based Diets: A Primer.]
This standard advice is problematic. For one, many people find that cleaning up their diets of saturated fat and cholesterol isn't a surefire way to improve their lipid profile, unless significant weight loss follows. (It's common to replace those saturated fats with excessive carb portions; when that happens, cholesterol levels may not respond as favorably as one might hope.)
Another issue is that standard diet therapy emphasizes restricting, or eating less of, foods that tend to increase cholesterol levels. It doesn't tell people what they can proactively eat more of to help improve their lipid profile. It's hardly surprising that most people wind up on a statin drug to lower cholesterol when all is said and done.
But new research on complementary dietary approaches to cholesterol reduction offers promise. What if there were foods or supplements that we could consume more of, whose presence in the diet would help lower cholesterol—in some cases, by as much as some traditional cholesterol-lowering drugs do?
Indeed, there are at least two such tools that are offering new hope for the power of food and dietary supplements to help lower cholesterol, independent of weight loss. Here are some of the highlights:
• The "Portfolio Diet": Past research has focused narrowly on individual foods that have the power to help lower cholesterol—usually by small margins of a few percentage points. Individual studies have separately suggested that oats, almonds, soy and plant sterol-fortified margarines may all have a modest clinical benefit to this end.
But more recently, researchers have taken a more global approach to dietary intervention by testing a dietary pattern that included a "portfolio" of such foods in people with high cholesterol, and comparing their outcomes to others following the standard recommended diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol.
READ MORE
[See Plant-Based Diets: A Primer.]
This standard advice is problematic. For one, many people find that cleaning up their diets of saturated fat and cholesterol isn't a surefire way to improve their lipid profile, unless significant weight loss follows. (It's common to replace those saturated fats with excessive carb portions; when that happens, cholesterol levels may not respond as favorably as one might hope.)
Another issue is that standard diet therapy emphasizes restricting, or eating less of, foods that tend to increase cholesterol levels. It doesn't tell people what they can proactively eat more of to help improve their lipid profile. It's hardly surprising that most people wind up on a statin drug to lower cholesterol when all is said and done.
But new research on complementary dietary approaches to cholesterol reduction offers promise. What if there were foods or supplements that we could consume more of, whose presence in the diet would help lower cholesterol—in some cases, by as much as some traditional cholesterol-lowering drugs do?
Indeed, there are at least two such tools that are offering new hope for the power of food and dietary supplements to help lower cholesterol, independent of weight loss. Here are some of the highlights:
• The "Portfolio Diet": Past research has focused narrowly on individual foods that have the power to help lower cholesterol—usually by small margins of a few percentage points. Individual studies have separately suggested that oats, almonds, soy and plant sterol-fortified margarines may all have a modest clinical benefit to this end.
But more recently, researchers have taken a more global approach to dietary intervention by testing a dietary pattern that included a "portfolio" of such foods in people with high cholesterol, and comparing their outcomes to others following the standard recommended diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol.
READ MORE
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