Heart disease is the biggest killer in most countries in the Western world and it is becoming more widespread in the Third World too as American-style junk food becomes more well-liked there as well. One facet of heart disease is high blood pressure and another is a high level of LDL, or ‘bad’, cholesterol and triglycerides.
Because of this, many doctors reckon that all individuals over the age of eighteen should have their cholesterol levels checked at least once a year, particularly if you know that your diet is pretty suspect or if you have genetic problems which mean that you will have high cholesterol.
Once you know that you have a difficulty, then you ought to definitely have a check up every year and take some steps to reduce your consumption of foods that increase your cholesterol levels. Foods that fall into this category are those that contain saturated fats or hydrogenated, trans fats.
This basically means cutting out these fats. Saturated fats are predominant in red meats and full-fat dairy products like milk, butter, cheese, cream, and beef and pork. Hydrogenated trans fats are common in commercial junk food like hamburgers, hot dogs, potato crisps, potato chips, pies and pasties.
If you have high levels of blood fats like HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides you have to do something and that means that you have two alternatives: which means that you have to either introduce lifestyle alterations or take tablets for the rest of your life.
If you would like to try fixing the difficulty yourself without tablets but with your medical doctor’s help, you will have to have frequent check ups to keep an eye on your progress or you could get a home cholesterol monitor. If you take this route, you will need to understand the monitor’s readings.
There are usually three or four important readings: LDL, HDL, Total Cholesterol and Triglycerides. HDL (or ‘good cholesterol’ ought to be| 40 or more; LDL (or ‘bad cholesterol’) ought to be less than 100-130. However, most home testing kits will only give the total cholesterol level, which ought to be below 200.
This total cholesterol reading is not entirely satisfactory because you will not know the individual cholesterol levels. After all, under 200 can still be very, very bad. Even very dangerous. However, if you take a GP’s test every quarter and you test at home until you get a feel for the effect that the measures you are taking are having, you ought to bel safe between tests.
However, these home test cholesterol monitors are becoming more and more sophisticated every year, so it is worth going to a substantial national chemists and seeing what is available from time to time. Anyway, if going to the medical doctor is difficult or too expensive, this may be your only option.
The reality is that home test kits are not very helpful yet, but they are better than nothing if used in conjunction with sceduled visits to the medical doctor, but on their own they do not give the whole picture and their results cannot be relied on as an indication that your cholesterol levels are safe.
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on several subjects, but is now concerned with low fat low cholesterol diet. If you want to know more, please visit our site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?