Healthy Living looks at controlling cholesterol
Exercise and a balanced diet are key factors for a healthy life. And as you’ll find out tonight in Part II of our series on cholesterol, with the Christmas festivities upon us, now is a good time to embark on a healthy lifestyle.
Marleni Cuellar, Reporting
One of the greatest risks of high cholesterol is heart disease. This risk can be reduced by lowering and controlling your cholesterol levels. Luckily, this does not require anything more than a strong will and good discipline. According to Nutritionist and registered dietician Karen Rosito, the key is to lead a healthier lifestyle.
Karen Rosito, Nutritionist & Dietician
“My first suggestion to them is usually to tell them to change your lifestyle a little at a time a day at a time. The second one is to start exercising because there is no better benefit than exercise it takes care of most of the ills. So, if you have high cholesterol and you start exercising and working the heart chances are it’s going to remove some of the plaque that lines the arteries.”
“Simply by exercising four days a week, and notice I’m not saying forty minutes, fifty minutes, four times a week at twenty minutes minimally. You take a walk you can reduce your cholesterol up to ten, fifteen percent. And that’s just walking, if you’re really obese just walking. Don’t ask if you do cardio, for example riding bike, cleaning your yard, chopping your yard; basic things; cleaning your windows. You don’t have to go to any fancy gym. What it does is simply lowering your cholesterol by making your body more efficient in dealing with the pumping of the heart and how the blood rushes through the arteries back to the heart.”
In addition to exercise, healthy eating is of equal importance. It is essential to note that this does not mean dieting but rather making the right food choices.
Karen Rosito
“ they should look at whole grains; whole wheat bread, maybe a seventy/thirty mix of brown and white flour, eating high fiber foods. When I say foods I mean fruits also like your regular golden plums and oranges; nothing fancy like apples and pears and grapes. But eating the Chinese plums now with a lot of skin, it’s quite delicious. Watching the amount of even chicken that they eat, chicken because we like the leg and the thigh and the other parts that have a lot of bad fat. So even if you have chicken just eat the breast and give the other family members that are not sick the other parts of the chicken. Eating more fish, I say eat fish three to four times a week eat, chicken once. The other two days go vegetarian.”
Sometimes prescription medications are needed to lower cholesterol to an optimal range but Dr. Cuellar shares some additional remedies for increasing the good cholesterol.
Dr. Fernando Cuellar, Internist/ Intensivist
You know that many times you would talk about natural substances before medication. I usually recommend that we increase sources of good cholesterol first, good oils or good fat which are basically the fish oils. This thing about taking the seven seas and cod liver oil and all of these fish oils is a very good practice. We, as kids, used to have that done to us and we used to wonder why that was done to us but it does work. Niacin also, eating a lot of fiber, a lot of grains are ways that you can naturally improve on your levels of cholesterol.”
In this particular season, most of us are anticipating the feasts to come. It is a time where we may consume double or triple the amount of our daily calories. Rosito warns of what this excess may cause.
Karen Rosito
“What the body does with the excess calories, for example somebody your height would need to consume maybe fifteen hundred calories if you’re exercising. Lets say during Christmas you consume three thousand calories a day because you go to parties, you have to drink your granny rum popo and eat everything else. What will happen to the other fifteen hundred calories? It turns to fat and what kind of fat? Triglycerides.”
Triglycerides, as Dr. Cuellar explains, may not be the same as cholesterol but is another fat in the blood that must be closely monitored.
Dr. Fernando Cuellar
“It’s another fat in the blood and I usually like to refer to them as cousins; they are related but not the same. But it does play a role in development of illnesses, of disease also… not as much as cholesterol. By itself it does in a lesser extent but when put together with high levels of cholesterol it worsens things.”
Marleni Cuellar
“So when you have combination of high cholesterol and high triglycerides what does that mean?”
Dr. Fernando Cuellar
“Wow. That’s an accident waiting to happen. That’s a good recipe for disaster.”
So take control and prevent any such disaster. Eat healthy and exercise regularly.
