Patriot Health Digest
Around 38% of U.S. adults have high cholesterol—which is concerning, given that having high cholesterol boost your chances of heart disease and stroke, the top two causes of death in the United States. The good news? If your physician has told you that you currently have high cholesterol, there is one thing you can do about it: make improvements to your diet.
According to Keith Ayoob, RDN and professor at the Einstein College of Medicine, what people eat can have a big impact on their cholesterol levels. And unlike people’s cholesterol meds, he says food does not come with any potentially terrible side effects. So, what is the best food to reduce your cholesterol? You might be surprised to discover that it’s something you might already keep on hand at home.
How to reduce “bad” cholesterol with food.
There are two kinds of cholesterol: HDL, the “healthy” kind, and LDL, the “un-healthy” artery-clogging kind. When changing your diet, eat foods that will help to raise your HDL cholesterol as well as reduce your LDL cholesterol.
When reducing your cholesterol, your fiber is the most crucial thing you can eat. You can think of fiber as a sponge that absorbs excess LDL cholesterol and helps your body to get rid of it.
The best food for your cholesterol is a pantry staple
When it comes to soluble fiber-rich foods go, specialist say the best one you could consume to keep your cholesterol within your control is black beans.
You can eat canned beans for this, or cook them in their dry form—either one works.
A 3/4 cup serving of black beans has 5.4 grams of soluble fiber— that is 19% of your daily value of fiber.
Black beans contain a lot of soluble fiber that conflicts with the reabsorption of cholesterol-filled bile acids in your stomach. The bile acids are ‘snatched’ by the fiber before they can be absorbed again by the body, and end up being expelled along with the fiber within your stool. Your body then will remove cholesterol from your blood to produce new bile acids in your liver. Then your blood cholesterol levels will be lowered.
Author: Blake Ambrose
