You may have been told to reduce your consumption of high-cholesterol foods like eggs, red meats and dairy, and shrimp, if you want to avoid high-cholesterol in your body. This is almost certainly wrong.
The fact is that cholesterol is a large molecule and has to be broken down to cross the gut wall. Once in the blood stream, cholesterol is re-formed. In part this can be driven by hereditary factors, but not to the extent some people would have you believe.
A major cholesterol regulator is your microbiome. A healthy gut flora makes short-chain esters. These are very anti-inflammatory but also they prevent ‘bad’ cholesterol forming from its raw materials.
As we have said many times before, measuring ‘total’ cholesterol is pointless. Each of us needs to ensure that our good cholesterol is much higher than our bad, (70:30) and the Rainbow Diet delivers with olive oil and walnut oils as a start point.
Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic have shown that the Rainbow Diet - rich in fruit and vegetables, with whole grains, fish and a little lean meat, as well as olive oil and nuts and seeds as fat sources, lowers blood sugar and cholesterol levels, even in people with type-2 diabetes. Red wine and using herbs instead of salt has been credited with lowering blood pressure as well.
The high levels of soluble fibre in The Rainbow Diet are another important regulatory factor, be they from oatmeal, or pulses, or seeds like sesame and flax, or nuts such as walnuts, almonds, pine nuts and cashews, or fruits and vegetables such as carrots, broccoli, prunes, plums and pears. These foods contain phytosterols. They are nature’s statins.