The doctor also noted there’s myths about cholesterol many still believe
We are often warned about our cholesterol and are told how diets can help – but did you know that you don’t need to banish eating fat altogether and can lower your bad cholesterol levels in just 10 days? According to a professor from ZOE, of which Tim Spector is a co-founder, ‘not all cholesterol is bad’ and you may be surprised at just how little you diet needs to change.
Cholesterol is a condition that causes fatty deposits to build up in your arteries, increasing your risk of heart attack and stroke. ZOE’s Chief Scientist, Doctor Sarah Berry is a world leader in large-scale human nutritional studies as well as an Associate Professor in Nutrition at King’s College London.
Stressing that we need cholesterol to survive, she notes there is a myth that we need to cut out fat in order to lower cholesterol but this is “nonsense.” In fact “following a healthy fat diet can actually improve your cholesterol” while “following a high carbohydrate diet can actually make your cholesterol worse.”
Is there good cholesterol?
Doctor Berry explains low-density lipoproteins (LDL) cholesterol is bad for us but high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol is good. This is because “the cholesterol that’s packaged in LDL is the cholesterol that is circulating in our blood and delivered to our peripheral tissues. It’s delivered along our arteries where it can be actually taken up into the arterial wall.
“The LDL particles have a particular label on them, which is called the apolipoprotein B label. So it’s got this address label saying that the receptors on the lining of our blood vessels recognise that enables it to cross over into the lining of our blood vessels because of this address label as a way of describing it called apolipoprotein B.
“It’s then taken up by the lining of the blood vessels”, she explains, Over time, this causes this atherosclerosis – where your arteries become narrowed, making it difficult for blood to flow through them. This, the doctor says, can cause “plaque formation” which “can then burst, and that’s when you get a blockage, which causes a heart attack.”
Should I cut fat from my diet to lower cholesterol?
Sarah explains that for every one millimole increase in LDL cholesterol, you significantly increase your risk of cardiovascular disease over 10 years by about 25%. But there are foods that can help – and ones that make it worse.
She notes: “The single most potent effect that we can have is by increasing our dietary fat intake to increase the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids that we include in our diet.” Warning people to not cut out fat entirely, unless you’ve been medically advised by a professional to do so, she says she would “caution anyone to change to a low-fat diet because they have high cholesterol.”
Urging people it’s all about eating the “right types of fat”, she says “I think that people should follow a moderate-fat diet, I don’t think people should go to a low-fat diet. I think what’s really important to say is it has to be from the right types of fat. It has to be from poly and monounsaturated fat sources, not from saturated fat sources.
“By increasing your intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids, you can reduce your LDL cholesterol. This is why evidence shows, again, from my own research, if you add nuts to someone’s diet, you can significantly reduce cholesterol by 5 to 10% just by adding nuts into the diet.”
What fats are good and what ones are bad?
Saturated fat is bad for us and can come from a variety of foods. According to the NHS it can be found in:
- butter, ghee, suet, lard, coconut oil and palm oil
- cakes
- biscuits
- fatty cuts of meat
- sausages
- bacon
- cured meats like salami, chorizo and pancetta
- cheese
- pastries, such as pies, quiches, sausage rolls and croissants
- cream, crème fraîche and sour cream
- ice cream
- coconut milk and coconut cream
- milkshakes
- chocolate and chocolate spreads
The expert that it’s best to try and cut down on how much of these you are having and instead, “increase the amount of fat you’re having from healthy sources, particularly from polyunsaturated fats, but also some from monounsaturated fats.”
Hailing polyunsaturated fats for having a “very potent effect on the LDL receptor”, she says “you’re going to reduce your LDL (bad) cholesterol quite significantly.”
In fact, “all of the evidence shows that people following a high polyunsaturated fat diet reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease by 10, 20, 30%”, the doctor says adding that increasing your whole grain intake can reduce your cholesterol levels with fibre also key for a diet too.
How can I lower my cholesterol in 10 days?
Urging people to look at their diet, stating “this is not a medical opinion” she says think about the following:
- Can you increase your polyunsaturated fat intake?
- Can you increase your fiber intake?
- Can you reduce your refined carbohydrate intake?
- Can you increase the amount of legumes you’re having? Beans, pulses, etc.
She suggests to try and make these changes first and see what happens over the course of the next few weeks. “Diet changes cholesterol really quickly”, she explains adding: “We see a change in cholesterol after about 10 days when people are following a kind of diet that reduces cholesterol.
“Within two weeks, you see quite a big change. Within a month, you’ve seen a huge change.”
Doctor Berry concludes by saying if you go back to your GP a month later, you should see that it’s “significantly reduced your cholesterol.” However if this isn’t the case and it’s “still alarmingly high, that’s when I think you need to continue that discussion about statins.”
