Are you insane! To lower cholesterol naturally with eggs!? Is this a hoax or another conspiracy theory making waves on the internet? And if it is not, I must admit, I never heard that one!
It’s all about fear of fat
When one gets on a mission to lower cholesterol naturally, just with foods, the first diet that comes to mind is a low-fat diet. Low-fat diet is heavily promoted as the best way to lose weight. It also has a high approval rate from doctors who believe that abstaining from fat will do miracles for the heart. After all it is all the fat accumulated in the arteries that cause a heart failure, right?
33% of Americans at any given time are on some kind of a diet, mostly meal plans that limit animal fat. From DASH to Ornish to Cambridge to Slimfast Americans are constantly on a mission to try another way of eating. We are hopping from one diet to another in hope to find that magic menu that would result in slimmer waist and lower cholesterol. But despite decades of trying we haven’t made much progress.
Low fat diets are useless
If you are nervously picking grease out of your plate you are here for a surprise. Low fat diets not only fail to cause a long-term weight loss, but they do nothing for the heart health. They are practically useless. They do not reduce the risk of heart disease or stroke even in people who lost weight and quit smoking.[i] Moreover, low fat diets can do a bit of bad. They are accused of contributing to development of insulin resistance, which may lead to diabetes.
Low fat diet does not work for lowering cholesterol
Rejoice! When you are healthy you can eat any amount of fat you want. You can be on low fat diet or high fat diet and your cholesterol numbers won`t change. Studies showed that it is not the amount of fat, but fat quality that makes the changes to cholesterol numbers.
- My three favorite ways of fixing bad numbers
- Nonsense foods you are told to eat
- Something you should add daily
Higher cholesterol has been reported not in people who eat high fat diets, but in people who eat heat-treated fat, such as hydrogenated or trans-fat. It is also my observation that patients who switch from processed (pasteurized, hydrogenated, fried, etc) fats to raw and unprocessed variety experience a dramatic improvement of cholesterol numbers. Your war on fat may end abruptly when you realize that there is a huge difference between a soft-boiled egg, fried egg, and egg waffle.
Just in case you are curious which foods have high or low cholesterol here is a summary. It works best if you print it and post it on your fridge.
.
Eating eggs does not change cholesterol numbers
Cholesterol has been demonized as a killer, and so have the eggs that carry it. Your doctor may be restricting your egg intake in fear that it may impact your health. But the egg-heart disease consumption myth has been debunked long time ago. Eating eggs neither increases cholesterol nor increases the risk for coronary artery disease.[ii] There is no need to be afraid. Eggs don’t plug arteries. This fact has been known for over 30 years.
Lowering cholesterol do not prevent arterial blockage
You’ve been told again and again that high cholesterol leads to arterial blockage. But this statement is nothing more than hearsay. Total cholesterol in blood does not correlate with development of atherosclerosis, hardening of the arteries.[iii] Atherosclerosis is now linked to inflammation, so don’t hope to clean up your arteries by lowering cholesterol. Here is a reminder. Brits have four times more deaths from blocked arteries than Frenchmen despite the same levels of fatty substance floating in the blood.[iv]
Here is how to lower cholesterol naturally with eggs
It would be unfair to write an article without a practical example, so here it is. I practice what I preach. My egg consumption and my cholesterol numbers are as follows:
I eat about 2-6 eggs every day, mostly soft boiled or lightly scrambled. I eat more than half a pound of butter (the real kind) every week. Both are organic and/or from a small local farmer. I am not on any diet or have health restrictions. I just don’t eat junk. I have no blood pressure of cholesterol issues, neither planning to make them. My numbers are:
- Average blood pressure: 110/70 mmHg
- TC (total chol) 158 mg/dl (4.08 mmol/l)
- HDL (good chol) – 82 mg/dl (2.13 mmol/l)
- LDL (bad chol) – 67 mg/dl (1.73 mmol/l) .
How can you maximize health while eating eggs
- Get them from a farmer who allows hens to roam free. Hens need to eat bugs and worms, not by-products of silos. Avoid eggs from sick hens kept in unnatural environment.
- Use minimal cooking. Keep yolk runny but look for firm white. An egg cooked this way retains the most nutrients. Eggs that are part of a processed food from a box or a tray or come pre-cooked fall into a category of junk. Avoid.
- Clean up your menu from processed food. It is fast food menu that clogs up your arteries, not the eggs.
- Teach your doctor. If he still thinks that low fat diet lowers cholesterol, he is not up to date with nutrition.
- Eat your eggs at will. When your diet is good and you have good lifestyle habits eggs become your friends, not enemies. The healthier you get the better they work.
How to lower cholesterol with eggs
If your cholesterol is high, don`t run in amok to suppress it, but instead consider it to be a sign that you’re deep into processed foods. People with high cholesterol either don`t cook at all or cook foods to death: deep fry, BBQ, or heat treat cheap oils and poor quality fats. Cholesterol does not kill, but signifies that a lifestyle change is desperately needed.
[button-green url=”https://liveuthing.com/uthing-awareness-q/” target=”_self” position=”center”]Take a Health Awareness Test[/button-green]
Take a good look at your dinner plate. Does it look heart-friendly? If you scratching your head with disapproval, consider switching to real food. If you remove junk and bring in the eggs instead, you will see your blood test changing and your doctor puzzled. He likely never heard that eggs can lower cholesterol naturally. Well, they can, provided one stops junk food and other diet garbage.
My new book “The Cholesterol Trap!” will give you a list of reasons and studies why low fat is wrong, and why your doctor is still clueless.
[i] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/news-womens-health-initiative-reducing-total-fat-intake-may-have-small-effect-risk-breast-cancer-no-effect-risk-colorectal-cancer-heart-disease-or-stroke
[ii] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7124663
[iii] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7114080
[iv] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1115846/
What alternative to walking will get the same results for high blood pressure since I have bad knees and ankles and cannot walk long distance and not 15,000 steps for sure.
Walking is actually the least helpful activity for high blood pressure. It is because it does not stress the heart sufficiently and it does not produce rapid weight loss. Swimming and biking are good substitutes. Walking is also bad for the knees and hips. Not that walking wears out the joints, but the monotonous movement makes the legs very stiff over time. Unless walking is combined with exercises that improve the legs range of motion I would not recommend walking for health correction.
PS. Bad knees and ankles are seldom due to joint problems. They are usually due to muscular imbalance caused by movement monotony eg. limiting activities to sitting, standing, walking. If you are stiff, can’t squat, or bring your ankle to your buttocks your bad knees and ankles should be fixed by improving flexibility of the legs.