So if we all know that plaque build up in the arteries is such a bad thing why then do so many people seem to get it? Why is it so common? The answer to this lies in the fact that the common signs of clogged arteries are not easily apparent to people at first and the actions we take that lead to its accumulation are difficult to reverse or change.

First of all, cholesterol builds up in the arteries on a typical basis because of minor abrasions or damage to the inner layer of the blood vessels, the endothelium. These abrasions are often caused by friction due to the effects of high blood pressure. When tiny tears occur, circulating LDL cholesterol can easily accumulate in the tear and then as the blood vessel heals the cholesterol is thus trapped inside the wall of the blood vessel.

This is a classic example of how cholesterol turns into artery plaques and it illustrates how the process can go unnoticed. We typically don’t have any sign that our blood pressure is high or that the cholesterol levels in our blood are not healthy. We periodically get these levels checked but over time the effects can lead to plaque build up and time, in this case, is our biggest enemy.

Ideally we need to avoid high blood pressure and high levels of LDL cholesterol to mitigate the risk of over accumulation of cholesterol which can build up on the artery walls. If we can successfully bring our HDL cholesterol levels up this will help since HDL cholesterol soaks up excess LDL, returning it to the liver. Similarly, if we can lower our average blood pressure levels this will also help.

The point is however that the most common serious medical conditions that now afflict most people in the developed world, and Americans in particular, are a direct result of cholesterol and plaque in the arteries. Take the initiative to get healthy and you will not regret it later on in life.

Do you often feel sluggish and weak? Do you experience frequent headaches, always feel agitated; have skin problems and other health related problems? If you answered a big yes to all of those questions, then you could be suffering from a bad colon.

You see, if your colon is filled with toxins, waste materials and other harmful organisms, you are very likely to experience the above symptoms. So, do you want to find out how you can get rid of all those toxic substances from your system? Well, all you need is to go and detoxify your body! One great detox program that you can try is called the Master Cleanse Secrets.

The Master Cleanse detox diet program has the ability to purify your body from within. You are most probably not aware of it, but you are actually filling your body with harmful toxins on a day to day basis from the foods that you eat, beverages that you drink and the air that you breathe. These harmful substances get accumulated in the walls of your colon and the longer they stay inside you the more harm they could cause to your body. This is the prime reason why you gravely need to undergo a detox program.

The Master Cleanse detox diet program will clear away all of these impurities from your body and have all of your bodily organs functioning at their best. If you choose to follow this particular detox diet program, you will no longer feel listless; you steer away from the possibility of acquiring serious ailments and you get to shed those excess pounds as well.

Almost anyone can undergo a detox diet; however, it is nevertheless always wise to consult first with your doctor before you go all out and make use of not just this particular diet, but any detox diet for that matter.

All in all, the Master Cleanse seems to be truly effective and a lot of those who have tried it can attest to it, so why not try it yourself?

So what is it in fruits and vegetables that lowers cholesterol? Fruits and vegetables contain a variety of vitamins and minerals that are needed to build, maintain and repair our bodies. Vitamin C for example is needed to create collagen, the sticky substance that keeps your arteries walls strong and elasticated and reduces the risk of atherosclerosis forming. Potassium is essential for carrying nerve signals to your muscles such as the heart. So low potassium levels can result in an irregular heartbeat or even a heart attack.

In the case of specifically lowering cholesterol the two most important components in fruits and vegetables are antioxidants and fiber. Studies show that people who switch to high fiber diets almost always display an accompanied lowering of overall cholesterol levels. Researchers explain that when you eat more fiber it improves your transit time. This has a positive effect on cholesterol levels by removing cholesterol that reaches the colon (through the food you eat) out of the body before it has a chance to be absorbed into the blood stream.

So be sure to eat plenty of whole fruits and vegetables and rather than rely on juicing recipes to get plenty of fiber in your diet. Juicing sacrifices fiber content but in return provides an exceptional amount of antioxidants. These antioxidants are extremely beneficial in keeping your heart healthy and so a balanced combination of juicing and eating whole fruits can really help lower cholesterol.

There are quite literally thousands, if not tens of thousands, of different kinds of antioxidants. As far as lowering cholesterol levels go, the antioxidants vitamin C, bio-flavonoids and carotenoids are among the most effective. They all have the ability to protect cholesterol cells from becoming damaged by free radicals. This damage would otherwise cause the cholesterol cells to harden and attach to the artery walls creating atherosclerosis. To find a variety of juice recipes that will supply you with an abundance of these antioxidants a good place to visit is green juice recipes.

Cholesterol is actually a fatty, waxy substance that occurs naturally in the body. It is created mainly in the liver and is necessary for all manner of vital functions from cell membrane creation to hormone production. Without cholesterol you would quickly die and in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle we need to maintain, not so much a low level, but a proper level of cholesterol.

The generally negative view of cholesterol undoubtedly derives from the fact that if it is too high it can lead to high blood pressure, gallstones and quite possibly a heart attack or stroke. Contributory factors leading to high cholesterol include diet, heredity, lack of exercise, smoking and high blood-sugar levels.

Cholesterol cannot travel through the blood stream by itself. It is transported by either Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) or High Density Lipoprotein (HDL) that as the names suggest package the cholesterol into protein composites.

It is important for the body to maintain a balance between the amount of LDL and HDL in the body. If there is a build-up of LDL in the arteries, it can among other things attract macrophages which are immune cells that obtain their cholesterol supplies from LDL. These can attach themselves to the LDLs and further complicate matters.

Herbal treatments can reduce the level of LDL and raise the level of HDL in the bloodstream. However most herbal treatments must be used for several months for realising their full benefit, though blood tests may show some improvement after as little as three weeks.

Other recommendations are to eat a diet low in saturated fat and calories and to reinforce this regime with exercise. You can also use alfalfa sprouts in your cooking to block the absorption of cholesterol from food and make sure you supplement your diet with vitamin B and other natural nutrients such as fresh juices including carrot, celery and beet juices. Avoid eating salted nuts including walnuts and almonds. Making sure you get the proper vitamins and minerals through eating good foods and the taking of vitamin supplements is essential to the maintenance of proper cholesterol levels.

The only dietary regime that has lasted over many, many years and is still successfully thriving and actively followed by many people is being a vegetarian. For those who apparently live in caves and you still do not know being what a vegetarian means, it simply means not eating any meat – strictly vegetables only.

Yes, no fish and no chicken either. It might sound awful to some but the truth is that many people are actually not only living this lifestyle but also loving it. Why is that? Well first of all, being a vegetarian is not all about weight loss. It is primarily about being healthy and eating healthily. It is also about protecting animal rights and ethical choices. Avoiding putting on weight is in fact a rather fortuitous extra benefit, but vegetarianism has nothing really to do with the weight loss/diet industry except of course that it works better than much of what this industry offers.

If it is your first time to try a vegetarian lifestyle then here are a few tips. You can still eat rice but choose brown rice instead. You can have wheat pasta or bread and you can also have oatmeal, all of which are a good source of carbohydrates. One of the main foodstuffs used to replace meat is tofu. Tofu is a good source of protein which you can usually only get from eating meat, dairy and other animal products. Good sources of fat are nuts such as pine, almond, walnut, cashew and others.

Being a vegetarian is not that hard once you get used to it. Talk with someone who has been a vegetarian for some years now if you need a little push or motivation with your new lifestyle because it will really help to listen to their experience.

Cutting meat from your diet can have a lot of benefits including saving you from having to use weight loss products like the proshape RX weight loss pill. It can also of course aid in controlling blood cholesterol levels since most saturated fats in your diet derive from animal products. Just like any other technique you might try in order to lose weight, consistency is the key and becoming a vegetarian can be hard work to begin with, not some miracle cure, but stick with it and (like taking more exercise) it will eventually just become part of your life and no effort at all.

However, not everyone is too crazy about taking medications and most are willing to look at any possible route that might help them lower their cholesterol without taking medications. One possible solution is to try out natural supplements such as Centrum Cardio to improve their cholesterol.

How does a supplement like Centrum Cardio work? Most natural supplements use the following ingredients: phytosterols, antioxidants, folic acid, and several B vitamins that all improve heart health. The main ingredient however is phytosterols which have been proven in clinical studies to absorb cholesterol.

Phytosterols do occur naturally in plants, but it takes a hefty amount of vegetables in your diet to match the dosage that produces the desired cholesterol lowering effect – about 20 lbs. if my arithmetic is correct. The good news is that you can simply take a supplement that provides the recommended 800mg of Corowise phytosterols.

Now you may be wondering exactly how do these plant sterols lower your cholesterol? The answer is pretty simple. Your body is fooled into believing that plant sterols are really cholesterol which causes your body to actually absorb less of the “real” cholesterol that you intake. Pretty clever eh?

The average performance seen in clinical studies has been ab 8% to 15% drop in LDL cholesterol levels over the short term. However, there have not been studies to determine the effects over the long term. You will definitely want to weigh your options with you doctor and let them know exactly what you are planning on taking on your own. This will help you receive the best diagnosis and care from your doctor.

The first step is to examine your lifestyle and make changes that are known to be beneficial in lowering cholesterol levels. None of this is rocket science: it is well known that being overweight, eating fatty foods, drinking, smoking and not taking enough exercise are significant contributory factors in causing high cholesterol. So the obvious recommendation is to stop doing these things and see if that alone is sufficient to bring about the necessary reduction in cholesterol levels.

This is something you can do on your own initiative – you certainly don’t need medical advice or supervision, but do begin slowly; if you have become unfit and/or overweight then suddenly going out for a long run for example could make you seriously ill (or even cause a heart attack).

When adopting self-help measures to lower cholesterol it’s helpful to understand that there are broadly 2 types of cholesterol – HDL which is considered “good” and LDL cholesterol which is considered “bad”.

LDL is most affected by what you ingest, so a healthier diet and cutting down on the fags and booze will help lower LDL cholesterol levels. HDL on the other hand is influenced by exercise and can be increased by being more active; higher levels of HDL cholesterol are in turn likely to bring down LDL levels. So as you can see, both watching what you eat and doing more physical exercise can be highly effective in lowering cholesterol levels.

But what should you look out for in your diet? Put simply, saturated fat. This is most commonly found in butter, hard cheese, red meat, cakes/biscuits/pastries and the like. Some types of food actually contain cholesterol (known as “dietary cholesterol”) but these don’t affect the cholesterol in your bloodstream to anything like the degree that saturated fats do. Examples include shellfish, liver, kidneys and eggs.

As well as reducing saturated fat content, there are foods that can actively help to lower cholesterol. Soluble fibre, which is present in most vegetables, fruit, oats (but not wheat) and beans, as well as plant sterols (commonly found in cholesterol lowering spreads), can help reduce LDL cholesterol levels.

Indeed, before you decide (or are compelled) to go down the route of prescription medication you might want to consider adding natural supplements based on plant sterols to your daily intake. The relationship between the acai berry and cholesterol provides an interesting example of how what you eat can quite significantly affect your cholesterol levels.

In addition to keeping an eye on what you eat, you may also need to monitor how much you eat. Shedding excess weight can also lower LDL and boost HDL cholesterol levels.

If the “self-help” route outlined above doesn’t appear to lower your cholesterol levels sufficiently after a couple of months you should consult a doctor as the cause of your high cholesterol may be due to other factors (such as genetically inherited familial hypercholesterolemia – FH for short), or it may be that your body needs a helping hand.

You can be sure though that any medical professional will still expect you to play your part and modify your lifestyle in conjunction with any drug treatment they may prescribe and since they get to periodically check your blood test results and take your weight they can easily tell who’s not sticking to the rules.

The standard medical treatment for hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol) is a class of drugs called statins. These work by depressing production of LDL cholesterol in the liver and are available in a range of potency. The most commonly prescribed (together with their brand names) are listed from weakest to strongest below:

• pravastatin (Lipostat)
• simvastatin (Zocor)
• atorvastatin (Lipitor)
• rosuvastatin (Crestor)

Generally there are few side-effects from taking statins (which incidentally are supplied in pill form) but they can cause damage to muscle tissue and the liver, particularly at high doses.

Getting the right type and dose of statin can be more of an art than a science since there is no reliable way to determine how effective they might be in any given individual. If your doctor decides to prescribe statins for you it is likely that they will request further blood tests to monitor their effectiveness and to also check for signs of any side-effects.

You might also be asked to take other drugs such as the cholesterol-absorption inhibitor ezetimibe (Ezetrol) in combination with statins and if your hypercholesterolemia has gone undetected for some time it is also likely you may be prescribed fibrates, nicotinic acid, aspirin and/or medication to lower your blood pressure.

Contrary to widespread belief (due to the emphasis on diet and cholesterol levels) only a small amount of the cholesterol in your blood is derived from the food you eat. Most of it is created by your liver. The fats you ingest from food (especially meat and dairy produce) are in the form of triglycerides which are mostly stored as fat on you, though low levels are also present in your blood.

In common with all fats, cholesterol is not soluble in water and cannot therefore be carried by directly the bloodstream. What happens is that it combines with proteins to form what are called lipoproteins which are soluble. There are various types od lipoprotein, labelled according to the density of protein in relation to lipid, and all are classed under the generic label “cholesterol”.

VLDL (very low density lipoprotein)

These (and a class of lipoprotein particles called chylomicrons) form only a small faction of your total cholesterol, however they are abundant in triglycerides which they transport to tissues requiring them.

LDL (low-density lipoprotein)

These form the bulk (some 70%) of the cholesterol transported around your body. An LDL particle has a low density of protein and therefore consists largely of lipids (fat). The principal function of LDL is to carry energy (as cholesterol) from the liver to your body’s cells. However, an excess of LDL in the bloodstream results in a build up of fatty deposits that over time restrict blood flow through your main arteries and blood vessels and hence LDL has come to be known as “bad cholesterol”.

The truth is that LDL is in fact a “good thing” but that you can have too much of a good thing, and it’s that which is a “bad thing”. Clear now?

HDL (high-density lipoprotein)

A much smaller (though significant) amount of cholesterol is in the form of HDL (unlike LDL these particles are mostly protein with little fat). These perform the return journey, soaking up excess cholesterol from tissues and artery walls, and transporting it back to the liver to be re-metabolised (or disposed of).

To maintain symmetry, HDL is referred to as “good cholesterol” since it mops up LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. It tends to be higher in women and can be increased through taking physical exercise.

Ideal concentrations for the various forms of cholesterol in your blood are:

Total cholesterol: less than 5.0 mmol/L
LDL cholesterol: less than 3.0 mmol/L
HDL cholesterol: more than 1.0 mmol/L

In general you should aim not only for a low total cholesterol level but for a relatively high level of HDL compared to a relatively low level of LDL (i.e. LDL 2.6 with HDL 1.3 – check here for more information about cholesterol levels).