Hack Your Cholesterol
10 ways to get it down without a statin!
Before I begin the post, an announcement. For those of you who are paying subscribers—the blog is now free. Thank you SO MUCH for your support. I’m pausing subscription fees indefinitely.
I still hope to get a post up here every Saturday, with video if I can, but this way, if time gets away from me, as it did today, I won’t feel quite as guilty about it. All good? All good.
Now, here are your 10 statin-free cholesterol hacks.
Garlic. Eat a lot of garlic. Put it in all your favorite dishes. Not only will it lower your cholesterol, it will repel vampires.
Black Soybeans. One tablespoon of black soybeans per day can lower the LDL by up to ten points.
Brazil nuts. These work better than statins. 4 Brazil nuts in one day lowered total cholesterol 20 points and that number laster for 30 days.
Goji Berries have been shown in clinical studies to reduce cholesterol 10%-15%
Give blood regularly. When you donate a pint of blood, you have to make a new pint of blood. When you make new blood, it’s not pre-polluted. It’s fresh and clean. And you won’t be polluting it with bad eating habits like you did the old blood.
When you have an aquarium, it’s customary to do a 10% water change weekly. Take out 10% of the dirty water. Add back an equal amount of clean water. A pint of blood is about 10% of our total blood volume.Avoid fats of all kinds. I know somebody’s yelling, “But we NEED healthy fats!” Yes, yes we do, and we get all kinds of healthy fats in our whole plant foods. They all have fat in them, in the right quantities and compounds with the perfect amounts of fiber and protein and micronutrients that taken together, are what make healthy fats healthy. Oils are the fats extracted from the veggies and bottled up. So we get ‘em straight up, no chaser. And they pad our flesh in one direction, and our blood vessels in the other.
We do not need any more fat than what can be found naturally occurring in our fruits, veggies, and whole grains. If trying to reduce fat, arterial plaque and cholesterol, then, we really must shun the oil, including olive oil and cooking spray.Exercise most days of the week. Now, here’s a thing I learned yesterday! We burn more fat with light, exercise, at 50% to 70% of our maximum heart rate than we do with more intensive exercise. Regardless of age. 156 BPM would be my max heart rate based on my age. I’ll round that up to 160 for easier math. So 80 to 112 BPM is where I want to be when I’m exercising for maximum fat burning. A brisk walk can do that!
Eliminate ALL animal products. We know for sure that dietary cholesterol is only found in animals. Our livers make it for us, and the animals’ livers make it for them. When we eat meat, eggs, and dairy products, we add all the animals' cholesterol to our own, and that’s too much.
Eliminate ALL trans fats. These are only found in very highly processed foods such as pre-packaged cookies, cakes, & crackers, plus margarine.
Increase Fiber. Soluble fiber blocks cholesterol, and we get it from greens, whole grains like oatmeal, fruits like apples & pears, and in beans like kidney beans and black beans, and in leafy greens. All fruits and veggies are packed with fiber. And that helps.
I’ve added the Brazil nuts, black soybeans, and an hour a day five days a week on the treadmill. I already live on mostly plants, so I’m getting all the fiber. I’ve been having 6+ servings of green leafies & cruciferous veggies 6 days a week for months now, which fills the bloodstream with the scrubbing bubbles of nitric oxide, which remove plaque that has not yet calcified, and heals the epithelial system that lines the blood vessels, so blood flows smoothly.
My cholesterol has been high for a long time. It’s was still too high at the last check, though since going vegan, it’s come down more than 60 points. It was very high.
I’ll be getting it checked again in about a week when I get the results of a recent contrast CT of my chest to see what kind of shape those “hearteries” are in.
I know whatever it is, it’ll be better than it would’ve been had I never changed my ways. I was a carnivore for 59 years, after all. It’s gonna take more than 5 years of veganism to undo all the damage that did. But I’m doing my damnedest!
I’ll report back. See you next Saturday!
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