A glass or two of dry red wine a day?http://longevity.about.com/od/lifel...p/chocolate.htm

Also exercise can help greatly.

Just my opinion from the numerous cholesterol tests I've taken in the past.

Fast for at least 14 hours prior to testing and avoid dietary cholesterol for about 2 or 3 days before testing. I have no research to back this up, but from my observation, I feel these two things if not observed cause a false higher reading....

I don't see how you can claim from that study that eating grains is heart healthy. They looked at:

Did you actually read the study? They changed a bunch of things, gave one group a statin and all the groups, including the control group, had lower cholesterol. Well... was it the statin or was it the nuts or something else? It doesn't say if it was a low calorie diet, perhaps they all lost weight. Perhaps they were all eating less wheat than they were before they started the diet. Perhaps their weight loss caused their CRP and cholesterol levels to decline.

Sorry, the study abstract just doesn't give enough information to support your assertion that eating wheat is good for your heart.

However Dr. Davis says he sees people all the time that have increasingly bad heart scan scores who think they're eating healthy when they eat this sort of diet, when they give up the grains then they start to have remission of their bad small lipoproteins and they can actually start to see clearance of the plauques around the heart. I think I'd believe the guy that can see visible proof rather than someone guessing by looking at 3 numbers from the typical lame cholesterol test that doesn't align very well with people actually having heart attacks and heart disease.

Plus let's not all forget that when we reduce the amount of cholesterol that we eat, our bodies will produce higher levels of it..

Hi there,

Please, please, please try to get hold of this book! It was written by a Scotsman who is also a doctor and he knows his stuff about cholesterol!

If you read this book, you will never be worried about your cholesterol levels again. By the way, 240 wouldn't have even been considered "high" just a few years ago. For some strange reason (the fact that Big Pharma wants to make BIG profits, maybe?) the supposedly "harmful" or "dangerous" levels have got lower, meaning that more and more people are diagnosed as having "high" cholesterol and more and more people get put on these really dangerous statins, which can have HORRIBLE side-effects. Look for some info on the web by googling something like statins and side-effects.

Another good website to get you going in the right direction is by Barry Groves called "Second Opinions". There's a load of stuff on there about cholesterol, too.

Hope this helps to ease your worries. And pass on the info about these websites and books to your doctor, too, HE's the one who should read this stuff - he's the one trying to frighten people and prescribe them dangerous drugs.

The general opinion is that statins are no good for women whatsoever - regardless of age or any other factor.

Take care and stop worrying!

amanda wood

Thank you all for the replies. I of course being in control of my person and my body would never take a medicine unless I wanted to. In fact, my goal in life is to never take medicine of any sort for my whole life. My father had a stroke at 55 (high blood pressure) and died at 61 (heart attack). I get concerned and I just want to do what is best for my overall health...including lowering my cholesterol through weight loss and exercise. However, my maternal grandma is still kicking around at 87 and has had high cholesterol, so go figure? Thanks again everyone.....the bottom line is that I will get my blood work done when I am ready. Thanks, Sandy

Why is this?

Nancy I did not say anything about wheat unless it was in the text of the article that I copied and pasted. I was talking about slow oats. Jenkins was in my home town to give a talk, and only mentioned oats and barley, not wheat or even whole grains generically.

I noticed that Jenkins added all these components together - the nuts, plant sterols, soy beans and oats in his talk and in this paper. I presumed that they had been tested individually in other research or other people's research, but did not follow up. The bad thing about his approach to research is that it does not identify the effective ingredients; the good thing is that it demonstrates that when added together they perform similarly to a statin and that both give greater results than the control.

But really I have to apologize to the OP because the question was about lowering cholesterol on LC at all, not about lowering cholesterol by a lot very quickly by whatever means without drugs. Adding grain to an LC diet would not do the trick then because it would increase carbs.

As for the comment by Gostrydr, crucifers (anti-oxidant, anti-cancer, goitrogenic or other) is a massive topic for another thread or twelve.

Hi there again!

You mentioned that your grandmother reached the age of 87 and had high cholesterol. Another fact that I picked up whilst reading up on this subject is that one piece of research noted that very high cholesterol levels were found among a group of elderly ladies who were in their nineties. Ergo, amongst other things, it is highly likely that their high cholesterol levels were partially responsible for their having reached such ages, rather than cholesterol being some deadly enemy that fells us before our prime.

Low cholesterol is found in people with depression, in suicide victims, in aggressive kids. It has also been linked to increasing one's chances of developing Parkinson's disease. In fact, there are worries that people on statins have a higher chance of developing Parkinson's because of their artificially low cholesterol levels.

As cholesterol is a major component of brain cells, it makes sense that if you fiddle around with your cholesterol levels, you're at risk of doing damage to your brain. Now if that isn't a reason to stop worrying about "high" cholesterol levels, I don't know what is!

I do hope your mind is at rest on this issue to some degree. It can't be pleasant having gone through a hysterectomy and I understand your concerns about your health. But cholesterol is an issue that practically nobody (apart from those with familial hypercholesteremia, I think it's called) needs to worry about. It's just a big money-making hype induced by Big Pharma.

amanda wood

I'm not sure exactly but it has something to do with the way the body releases the fatty acids from the body stores.

Hi everyone. Thanks Amanda, I am at peace with my decision to just lose my extra weight and continuing to exercise. I totally agree with you about Big Pharma.....I support the US economy enought by being an average consumer......I don't need to support it anymore by buying into this cholesterol hype. LOL

Sandy