Cholesterol: Basics, Factors affecting its levels and Natural ways to lower cholesterol levels

 Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance that’s found in all cells of the body. Your body needs some cholesterol to work properly. The cell walls need cholesterol to produce hormones, vitamin D, and the bile acids that help you digest fat. Your body produces all the cholesterol it needs.  However, cholesterol also is found in some of the foods you eat. But the body only needs a limited amount of cholesterol. When there’s too much of cholesterol in your body, health problems, such as heart disease, may develop. High blood cholesterol is a condition in which you have too much cholesterol in your blood. This condition usually has no signs or symptoms. People who have high blood cholesterol have a greater chance of getting coronary heart disease, also called coronary artery disease. Coronary heart disease is a condition in which plaque builds up inside the heart arteries. Plaque is made up of cholesterol, fat, calcium, and other substances found in the blood. When plaque builds up in the arteries, the condition is called atherosclerosis. Over time, plaque hardens and narrows your coronary arteries. This limits the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the heart and gradually it blocks the arteries in the heart. If the flow of oxygen-rich blood to your heart muscle is reduced or blocked, heart attack may occur.

 

Types of Cholesterol:

Cholesterol travels through your bloodstream in small packages called lipoproteins. These packages are made of fat (lipid) on the inside and proteins on the outside. There are three types of lipoproteins in your blood: high density, low density, and very low density. The specific type depends on how much protein there is in relation to fat.

• Low density lipoproteins (LDL) is also called "bad" cholesterol because it can cause plaque buildup on the walls of arteries. The more LDL there is in the blood, the greater the risk of heart disease.
• High density lipoproteins (HDL) is also called "good" cholesterol. It helps the body to get rid of LDL. Maintaining a higher level of  HDL is important. If your HDL level is low your risk of heart disease goes up.
• Very low density lipoproteins (VLDL) is similar to LDL in that it contains mostly fat and not much protein.
• Triglycerides, another type of fat, is carried in the blood by VLDL. Excess calories, alcohol, or sugar in your body is converted into triglycerides and stored in fat cells throughout your body.

Factors Affecting Cholesterol Levels

A variety of factors can affect your cholesterol levels. They include:

• Diet: Foods rich in cholesterol and fats like saturated fat and trans fat, increase your cholesterol levels. Saturated fats, like those in meat, full-fat dairy products and some oils, raise your total cholesterol. Trans fats, which are found in margarines and store-bought cookies, crackers and cakes, are particularly bad for your cholesterol levels. These fats raise low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the "bad," cholesterol, and lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the "good," cholesterol.
• Exercise: Lack of physical exercise  increases your cholesterol levels. Physical inactiveness raises your LDL levels and lowers the HDL.
• Over weight: Being overweight increases the cholesterol levels. Gaining some extra pounds even just a few contributes to high cholesterol. Your eating habits and daily routines are mainly responsible for gaining extra weight.
• Diabetes: Poorly controlled diabetes increases cholesterol levels. Uncontrolled diabetes slowly raises your LDL and lowers your HDL.
• Stress: Stress and its companion emotions—tension, anxiety, anger, depression—trigger the release of chemicals that constrict arteries, reduce blood flow to the heart, raise blood pressure, and elevate your heart rate. These changes, in combination with uncontrolled cholesterol, can put you on course for a heart attack.
• Age and Gender: As you get older, cholesterol levels rise. Before menopause, women tend to have lower total cholesterol levels than men. After menopause  women's LDL levels tend to rise.
• Heredity and Other factors: Your genes partly determine how much cholesterol your body makes. High blood cholesterol can run in families. The other factors that contribute to high cholesterol can be medications. Certain medications and medical conditions can cause high cholesterol.

 Natural Ways To Lower Cholesterol Levels

Healthy Lifestyle can help reduce cholesterol, keep you off cholesterol-lowering medications. Here are some ways to reduce the cholesterol levels naturally:

1. Eat healthy foods

• Eliminate trans fat from your food. Trans fat is found in fried foods, bakery foods like cakes, cookies etc. Don't rely on packages that are labeled "trans fat-free." If a food contains less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving, it can be labeled "trans fat-free." Even though those amounts seem small, they can add up quickly if you eat a lot of foods that have a small amount of trans fat in them. Read the ingredients list carefully. You can tell if a food has trans fat in it if it contains partially hydrogenated oil.
• Choose healthy fats like saturated fats in your diet. Saturated fats found in red meat and whole milk products raise your cholesterol levels. You should get less than 7 percent of your daily calories from saturated fat. Instead, choose leaner cuts of meat, low-fat dairy and monounsaturated fats found in olive, peanut and canola oils for a healthier option.
•  Eat foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acids can help lower your LDL ("bad") cholesterol. Some types of fish — such as salmon, mackerel and herring — are rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Other good sources of omega-3 fatty acids include walnuts, almonds and ground flax seeds.
• Include more fiber rich foods in your diet. Dietary fiber found in beans, fruits, and other foods binds to cholesterol, lowering LDL levels by about 5%. Soluble fiber can help lower cholesterol by acting like a sponge to absorb cholesterol" in the digestive tract. Good sources of soluble fiber include dried beans, oats, and barley, sweet potatoes, carrots, beets as well as fiber products containing psyllium.
• Whole grains foods are rich sources of heart healthy antioxidants that lowers the cholesterol level. Various nutrients found in whole grains promote heart health. Choose whole-grain breads, whole-wheat pasta, whole-wheat flour and brown rice.
•  Dark green leafy vegetables and egg yolks contain lots of lutein, the sunshine-yellow pigment. Include lutein-rich foods daily in your diet, which guards against heart attacks by helping artery walls "shrug off" cholesterol invaders that cause clogging.  

    2. Exercise

• Exercise is a great way to raise HDL. People who have had a heart attack can reduce their death risk by 25% with exercise compared with usual care. Moderate physical activity can help raise high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the "good" cholesterol. With your doctor's OK, work up to at least 30 minutes of exercise a day. Physical activities like a brisk walk, swimming, yoga, running or any kind of activity would be helpful.

    3. Lose weight

• Carrying some extra pounds — even just a few — contributes to high cholesterol. Losing as little as 5 to 10 percent of your body weight can help significantly reduce cholesterol levels. You should be careful about your eating habits and daily routines. Don't eat when you're bored or frustrated, take a walk instead. Avoid fast foods for lunch every day, pack something healthier from home. If you're sitting in front of the television, try munching on carrot sticks instead of potato chips as you watch. Don't eat mindlessly.   

    4. Quit smoking and drink alcohol only in moderation

• If you smoke, stop. Quitting may improve your HDL cholesterol level. Just 20 minutes after quitting, your blood pressure decreases. Within 24 hours, your risk of a heart attack decreases. Within one year, your risk of heart disease is half that of a smoker. Within 15 years, your risk of heart disease is similar to someone who never smoked.
• Moderate use of alcohol has been linked with higher levels of HDL cholesterol, but the benefits aren't strong enough to recommend alcohol for anyone who doesn't already drink. If you choose to drink alcohol, do so in moderation. Drinking too much alcohol can lead to serious health problems, including high blood pressure, heart failure and stroke.

    5. Find ways to short-circuit stress

• Stress in combination with uncontrolled cholesterol, can put you on course for a heart attack. To block your body's stress response, simply removing yourself from the stressful situation can help. Go for a short walk, practice deep breathing, perform a few simple stretches, meditate whatever enables you to relax. You'll feel better, you'll think more clearly, and you'll spare your heart from harm.

    6. Drink green tea

• Green tea is a healthier alternative to sodas and sugary beverages. Green tea contains compounds that can help lower LDL cholesterol. In a small study conducted in Brazil, people who took capsules containing a green tea extract were able to reduce their total cholesterol.

Conclusion

 

Sometimes healthy lifestyle changes aren't enough to lower cholesterol levels. Make sure the changes you choose to make are ones that you can continue, and don't be disappointed if you don't see results immediately. If your doctor recommends medication to help lower your cholesterol, take it as prescribed, but continue your lifestyle changes.

VITAL ROLE OF WATER IN OUR BODY

Water is our body's most significant nutrient, involves in every bodily function, and makes up 70- 75% of your total body weight and is a major element of our physical structures and vital organs.A healthy adult living in a normal climate should drink 1.5 liters of water per day. Water enables to balance water losses and maintain one’s body properly hydrated. A healthy body has exactly the correct measure of fluid inside and outside each cell, which is called as fluid balance. Maintaining your fluid balance is essential to life. If too little water is within a cell, it contracts and dies. If there’s too much water, the cell bursts. Muscle tissue has more water than fat tissue. The average male body has proportionately more muscle than the female body, so males have more water in their body than females. If you are not getting enough water, your body will respond by pulling it from other places, including your blood. This does the closure of some smaller vessels (capillaries), making your blood thicker, more susceptible to clotting, and harder to pump through your organization. And this contributes to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and nerve disease. 

 

The vital functions of water in our body are:

  

Water Protects Your Tissues, Spinal Cord, and Joints

The presence of water in and around body tissues helps defend the body against shock. The brain, eyes, and spinal cord are among the sensitive structures that depend on a protective water layer. Maintaining your body hydrated helps it retain optimum levels of moisture in these tender regions. Water is present in the mucous and salivary juices of our digestive systems. Water is important for moving the food through the digestive tract. Those who drink less water or dehydrated will have the difficulty to swallow the food. Water helps protect the spinal cord, and it acts as a lubricant and cushion for your joints.

Water Helps In Eliminating Body Waste

Enough water intake enables your body to excrete waste through sweating, urination, and defecation. The kidneys and liver use water to help flush away waste. Water can also keep you from becoming constipated by softening your stools and helping propel the food you've eaten through your intestinal tract. Water is likewise necessary to help you digest soluble fiber. With the help of water, this fiber dissolves easily and benefits your bowel health by doing well-formed, soft stools that are easy to pass.

Water Helps In Metabolizing Stored Fat

Liver's primary function is to metabolize stored fat into energy. The kidneys are responsible for filtering toxins, wastes, ingested water, and salts out of the blood stream. If you are dehydrated, the kidneys cannot function properly, and the liver must work extra time to compensate. As a result, it metabolizes less fat. If you are trying to lessen the amount of fat on your torso, maintain your body hydrated.

Water Act As Body's Transportation System

Water is the medium by which other nutrients and essential elements are distributed throughout the body. As a major portion of the blood, water helps move glucose, water-soluble vitamins, minerals, other nutrients and some medications throughout your body. The digestion of protein and carbohydrates to usable and absorbable forms and their distribution to different parts of body depends on water as part of the chemical reaction. Water also works as the transport for body waste removal.

Water Regulates Your Body Temperature

Our health and well-being is dependent on keeping body temperature within a real narrow range. Water itself changes temperature slowly and helps regulate body temperature by serving as a good heat storage material. Water has a large heat capacity, which helps limit changes in body temperature in a warm or a cold environment. Water allows the body to release heat when ambient temperature is higher than body temperature. The body begins to sweat, and the evaporation of water from the skin surface very efficiently cools the body. Water also has a high heat capacity. A great deal of energy is required to increase its temperature. Since the body contains more water than anything else, it requires rather a significant sum of heat to elevate your body temperature.

Conclusion:
water is a great natural appetite suppressant. There are three ways we draw water into our physical structures. We take it from the foods we consume, the fluids we drink, and as a byproduct of metabolism. Each day water losses are balanced with water intake. The body possesses a sophisticated organization that acts to maintain water equilibrium. Thirst is a trigger that reminds us to take in more water. It is significant to be aware of fluid intake. If water is something you rarely think about, you are not alone. Many people don’t realize the important role water plays in major body functions. If you truly want your body major functions to execute properly, and so you should be aware of fluid intake and drink enough water to sustain a tidy lifespan.