Cholesterol is a hot topic these days. A huge number of people are told their cholesterol is too high and need to go on cholesterol lowering drugs. people are scared into believing that if they don’t get their cholesterol levels down they could have a heart attack or a stroke. Its interesting to me that only around twenty years ago a cholesterol level of 300 was considered normal.
The medical community is now telling us that a cholesterol level over 150 is too high. There is talk of lowering that even lower to 100 which would put the majority of our country on cholesterol lowering drugs. The fact is there is no medical or scientific evidence to show any correlation of high cholesterol and increased heart disease or stroke. You may ask why not lower your cholesterol just to be safe, what harm could it do?
Here is one example. Have you noticed that right around the time the high cholesterol limit was lowered there was suddenly a large increase of advertisements for male enhancement drugs? This may seem strange but the two are related. Hormones are made from cholesterol. When cholesterol levels are too low hormonal imbalance can happen. More men than ever are getting testosterone injections and taking other harmful drugs in an effort to get their bodies working normal again. Often times the cause of this problem is too low cholesterol.
Some people may have a cholesterol level that is too high. If this is the case there are many natural and safe ways to bring the levels down. More important than total cholesterol levels are the ratio of high density lipoproteins(HDL’s) and low density lipoproteins(LDL’s) . HDL’s are good and LDL’s aren’t. By increasing your HDL’s you can actually lower your LDL’s. HDL’s can be increased by ingesting omega3 and omega6 fatty acids. A great way to do this is taking fish oil or flax oil or a combination of the two into your daily diet.
The bottom line is everyone is different when it comes to their normal cholesterol levels. Some are higher, some are lower and some are in the middle. Focus on a healthy ratio of HDL’s and LDL’s rather than total cholesterol.