What are the healthy foods to lower cholesterol?

At present, there are no special foods that can directly and quickly lower cholesterol. Most of the foods that can help regulate blood cholesterol levels in the daily diet are foods that can reduce the intake of bad fats, hinder cholesterol absorption, and help regulate blood lipid metabolism. Common ones include unprocessed whole grains, deep-sea fatty fish, original nuts, soybeans and their products, as well as fruits and vegetables rich in soluble dietary fiber.

When many elders around me were diagnosed with high cholesterol, their first reaction was to blacklist high-cholesterol foods such as egg yolks and squid. In fact, this is a common misunderstanding. The current consensus in the academic community is that the daily intake of exogenous cholesterol by healthy people has no effect on blood cholesterol. The impact only accounts for 10% to 20%. The real impact is the intake of trans fats, added sugars and refined carbohydrates. Unless you are a hyperlipidemia patient with abnormal cholesterol metabolism, eating one whole egg a day is completely fine. There is no need to stop eating due to choking.

Last year, my mother's physical examination revealed that LDL was 3.8, which was 1 unit higher than the normal value. The doctor said that she does not need to take medicine for the time being, but to adjust her diet for 3 months. When I changed her diet, I did not ask her to give up eggs. I just replaced the white porridge she had been drinking for more than ten years in the morning with pure oatmeal with 10g of chia seeds. Half of the pigs were cooked in the stir-fry at noon. The meat was replaced with steamed pangasius or braised mackerel. When I got hungry in the afternoon, the peach cake and honey that I loved to eat were replaced with 3 almonds or a handful of plain walnuts. I was afraid that she would find it too bland and occasionally mixed her with a vegetable salad with chickpeas. I ate like this for 3 months and then went for a review. The low density was directly reduced to 3.1, and the effect was better than we expected.

Of course, I have also encountered many pitfalls. I heard someone said that natto is good at lowering cholesterol, so I forced her to eat fresh natto every day. However, she found the sticky fermented smell disgusting and stopped eating it after three days. Later, after checking the information, I found out that the core function of natto is the nattokinase and plant sterols in it. If you really can't get used to eating fresh natto, you can use natto powder and mix it in porridge to achieve a similar effect. You don't have to force yourself to eat something you don't like. There is also the saying that "soy isoflavones lower cholesterol" that has been popular for a long time. In fact, there are different research conclusions. There are indeed experiments showing that the plant sterols in soybeans can hinder the intestinal absorption of cholesterol, but you need to eat more than 30g of soy protein every day to have obvious effects. You need to drink about 2 pounds of soy milk or eat 4 pieces of northern tofu. The little tofu and soy milk that ordinary people eat on a daily basis has very limited effects. Don't be fooled by people selling soy health products and pay the IQ tax.

There are also many people who believe in the folk remedies of onions soaked in vinegar and fungus scraped into oil. I have specifically read clinical studies related to hyperlipidemia. The content of active ingredients in these ingredients is too low. You have to eat several kilograms of onions or soaked fungus at a time to achieve the effective dose.

In fact, the cholesterol in our blood vessels is like the scale in the water pipes at home. Low-density lipoprotein is the "bad porter" responsible for accumulating dirt on the pipe wall, and high-density lipoprotein is the "good porter" responsible for transporting dirt to the liver for metabolism. When we adjust our diet, we essentially mean to drink less water. Reverse the dirty, oily water in the pipes, and give more buffs to the good porters. If the water pipes are so clogged that they are almost blocked, that is, if the low density exceeds 4.9, don't just rely on eating to treat it. If you should, go to the doctor to prescribe lipid-lowering drugs. Diet is just a supplement, don't delay the business.