I am not a doctor. I am a 30 year old library Aide and I am not particularly fond of doctors. When you are too poor to afford insurance but make too much money to receive government help you learn to avoid doctors or any other medical institutions unless you are dying. Welcome to America.
Five years ago I started a new job at a library which helped me to purchase a modest health insurance. No bells and whistles on this baby. If it isn’t medically necessary it isn’t covered. But it covers necessary doctor’s and emergency room visits, with only a small co-pay. I only accepted the insurance because it wasn’t going to cost me anything, and you never know when you are going to be break something or be on deaths door.
My wife had other ideas. Since I finally had insurance she wanted me to get a physical. I wasn’t keen on the idea but once my wife gets an idea in her head I’ll be happier in the long run if I just go with it. I also figured that it was just a physical and I was in reasonably good health so what could it hurt. I was 29 years old at the time and I was 6’1″ and 192 lbs. I wasn’t what you’d call muscular but I wasn’t fat either. It wasn’t like I had a terrible diseases; I doubted there would even be needles involved.
It turns out that the doctor I saw was very nice, and since this was a physical she asked me the basic questions about my lifestyle and gave some practical advice to remain healthy. After a half hour or so I left the office, what had seemed painless however was only momentary. I had been given an order for blood work. Apparently my wife forgot to mention that this was pretty standard in a physical, probably because she was well aware of my aversion to needles!
When I got the results of my blood work I was quite shocked to find that my cholesterol levels were borderline high at a level of 215. This number wouldn’t be terrible except my LDL (bad) cholesterol was much higher than my HDL (good) Cholesterol. To tell you the truth it wasn’t the number which scared me; it was the fact that I wasn’t even 30 years old yet and I felt relatively healthy. If I was this bad now what would I be like in 10 to 15 years. And one other thing scared me… they scheduled me for more blood work three months later to check my levels again. If I didn’t want to be continually jabbed with needles I needed to get my cholesterol levels down, and fast. And guess what? I did.
Things I learned
I didn’t want to continually have to have blood work to check my cholesterol levels, and I also wasn’t looking forward to the idea of having to pop a cholesterol drug everyday at the ripe old age of 30. So I talked to my physician and I did some quick research on the causes of high/bad cholesterol and how to combat it. I learned some interesting and important things.
First, high cholesterol can be hereditary. Our bodies naturally produce cholesterol. So you don’t have to be fat or even have the worst diet in the world to have high cholesterol. Second, we get cholesterol from what we eat, if what we eat is from, or contains, animal products. The fact that we increase our cholesterol by what we eat of course is nothing new to most of us, but it is also true that we can reduce our cholesterol by what we eat. So a third thing that I learned was that eating more oatmeal, fish, olive oil, and certain nuts could actually lower my cholesterol. And, go figure, I actually like these foods. (Much of this simple information can be found at http://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/default.htm and at other sites like this.)
So based on these things, as well as other bits of information that I may have absorbed along the way, I devise my own diet to reduce my cholesterol. It is to be noted that any plan to reduce cholesterol or to be healthy in general should include a good exercise plan. That being said, I have trouble sticking to an exercise plan. I like being active and playing sports, but I hate gyms and lifting weights. So while I tried to make use of the exercise bike that my wife and I bought, I also tried to walk to work as much as I could.
Changes
Armed with information I set about evaluating my diet. I thought long and hard about what I usually ate and I made a personal inventory of the most likely sources of bad cholesterol. I love sausage, cheese, and eggs; those were my big weaknesses. I’m sure there were other things that I ate that contained bad cholesterol but those were my big three.
In doing my inventory though it was also important for me to at least realize that there is cholesterol in many of the prepared foods I ate. I would have to remain cognizant of that and start checking labels for Cholesterol amounts and serving sizes. Serving sizes are important because an amount of cholesterol might look small and meaningless, but if that numbers is based on a small serving size of something you know that you will eat two or three servings of, the cholesterol will multiply quickly.
With the information I gathered about myself I formulated changes that I would have to make to my diet in my head. I didn’t put it on paper because I knew that if I had to put it on paper to remember it then my diet was becoming too complicated and I would never stick with it. I also kept in mind that if I couldn’t eat things that I liked, again I wouldn’t stick to it. So, I had to look at what I could eliminate, what I could moderate, and what I just couldn’t live without.
First I looked at my big three (sausage, cheese, and eggs) to decide what I could do about them. Considering that they were all animal products I knew that they all had to be dealt with, but to what extent is the question.
Sausage is my favorite meat, but to be truthful if it comes from a pig I’ll eat it in any of its permutations: ground pork, patties, links, bacon, Canadian bacon, bratwurst, polish sausage, ham, pork chops, ribs, chorizo, and various lunch meats etc. The only problem with that is pork is relatively high in cholesterol, especially the fatty bits I like to eat. So as much as I loved it I had to give it up whole hog so to speak.
The verdict seems to always be out on eggs. One minute they are bad for you the next they aren’t, and then it apparently depends on your condition. So I decided that to be on the safe side I would try not to eat more than one egg yolk a day, as that seems to be where all the cholesterol is. If I needed more than one egg I would have one whole egg and the rest egg whites, and then my dogs would get a healthy snack with the other egg yolks.
If there is one thing that I could not live without it was cheese. I just could not give up cheese, but what about low fat varieties? Just the thought of it makes me want to puke. I love really good cheese from the solid and subtle to the soft and stinky I love them all. Cheese was where I drew the line. Some one else may be able to eat low fat cheese or limit their intake, but not me.
So thus far I had two major modifications in my diet: I cut out the pig altogether and I limited my egg yolk consumption.
Addition by Subtraction
(Wait, Strike That, Reverse It)
The next step was subtraction by addition. As was mentioned earlier there were things that I could add to my diet to help lower my cholesterol.
When talking about cholesterol I think its best to always start with your animal consumption. I did not eat a lot of chicken or beef by many people’s standards but I still ate them, and I knew that if I cut out pork it would be really tempting to replace it with one of the other two options. So, I planned for that contingency ahead of time. If I wasn’t craving meat I would have a plant protein like beans; if I was craving meat I would eat fish. Both options are great for lowering cholesterol. Beans add fiber to your diet, and while fish do contain small amounts of cholesterol, the cholesterol lowering effects of the Omega 3 Fatty Acids (especially in fattier fish) makes the benefits far outweigh any detriment.
The following step was to add more fiber to my diet. I took the advice of all the commercials you see pushing cereals. I ate more oatmeal, which was easier to enjoy since it was a normal Mid-Atlantic winter when I started this. I also ate more Cheerios or some other generic oat cereal. I probably didn’t do this every morning, but I would guess it was five times a week. If that wasn’t enough oats and fiber I also made my own granola mix to take with me to work as a snack. My usual snacks weren’t necessarily full of cholesterol but they weren’t exactly good for me either, so I decided I would be better served by the change to more oats, nuts, and dried fruit etc.
Another way that I added fiber was just remembering to eat those fruits and vegetable that always died in the refrigerator or kitchen counter. It isn’t like I don’t like them. They just aren’t the first things I grab when I am really hungry. With less meat in my diet, variety in vegetables was a must. I tried to bring a piece of fruit back to work with me after my lunch break. I added raw baby spinach to nearly every sandwich that I ate. And again, since it was still winter I ate a lot of vegetable soups.
Lastly, it was important to use more olive oil. Olive oil lowers the bad cholesterol while not affecting the good cholesterol (the oil in fish does that too). Since I love Italian food I would normally eat olive oil anyway, but it was important to substitute as much olive oil as I could for the butter that I ate. I’m not a butter fanatic but it does taste good. Margarine was not an option since it doesn’t taste as good as butter and it is typically made from hydrogenated oils. Olive oil on the other hand is good for you and it tastes great, and it can be used to pan fry. (If you need to pan fry over high heat use a light olive oil it has a higher smoke point).
It is good to note for anyone reading this that this plan of mine pretty much eliminated fast food. Eating out at sit down restaurants can be difficult as well but more manageable because there are more fish, salad, and vegetarian options. I didn’t consider this restrictive, but I always preferred eating at home anyway because 1) I’m cheap, and 2) I’m a good cook and my food tastes better than the restaurant’s.
Results
Okay, so those are pretty much all of the changes I made over that 3 month span. So, what were the results?
As I mentioned already, when I first had my cholesterol checked in January it was 215. When I went back and had it checked at the end of April it was then 181. I dropped my cholesterol by 34 points! That is a significant drop in three months.
It is important to note that my mother has high cholesterol, my dad had high cholesterol, and my grandfather on my dad’s side had high cholesterol. Who knows how many other relatives have or had high cholesterol. The point is that with me it is probably hereditary, but that doesn’t mean I have to go on a drug. Moderate diet and exercise changes will make a significant difference even if your cholesterol problem is partially hereditary.
While the changes I made were sometimes annoying for the most part they weren’t really hard to live with and I still enjoyed eating. So get your cholesterol checked and if it’s high don’t immediately go for the drugs. Drug regimens might be easier to follow but they usually have some side effects.
Words of Caution
The tendency with this type of diet, as with any diet, is to overindulge in other foods not related to your problem. In my case I knew that my problems were fat induced, particularly animal fat. Sugars did not seem to be part of the main problem so I would indulge myself in treats that contained no cholesterol but had ample simple sugars, such as candy and sodas. The problem with this is that it increased my triglyceride levels. So, remember sugar in moderation is not bad for you, but don’t increase sugar intake exponentially because you are decreasing fat.
Another word of caution is to remember to exercise. The addition of walking to my diet was good, and as you noticed my cholesterol did go down. However exercise will also help lower your triglyceride levels, and I still wasn’t getting enough. So be sure to add a moderate exercise regimen to your diet plan.
Lastly, all of the above is what worked for me. I am a big proponent of prevention. I am not telling anyone else how to diet or exercise – I am not a professional. I am saying that we can do a lot to protect our health by making wise lifestyle choices. So, that being said, talk to your doctor before drastically altering your diet or activity levels in any way.