1. Before starting on your plan of action, you need to set realistic goals and be flexible for changes that you might make. These changes need to be done one at a time.

2. Get support from your friends and loved ones. Support groups are very important during this time. They are the ones who motivate you and help you carry out your goals.

3. You need to have a diary to take note of the changes you’ve made, their effects, and other observations you’ve noticed.

4. Lose weight. Having excessive weight usually contributes to you having high cholesterol levels. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a few pounds; if it’s an extra pound then you need to lose it. Losing about 5 to 10 pounds of your excess weight can significantly reduce your cholesterol levels.

5. Eat foods that are good for your heart. Changing your diet despite years of eating unhealthy foods makes a big impact on your health and would significantly help in lowering your cholesterol levels.

Avoiding or minimizing saturated fats which are usually found in red meat and dairy products can greatly affect your cholesterol levels. Saturated fats elevate your total cholesterol and LDL or low-density lipoprotein. 10 percent is the recommended amount of saturated fat you should get daily. Lean meats, low fat dairy products, and foods which have high monounsaturated fat contents like peanut, canola oil, and olive are healthier choices for you.

Trans fats found in fried foods and commercially baked goods like crackers and cookies should be removed from your diet. Trans fats are usually found in products labeled “with partially hydrogenated oil”.

Cholesterol consumption should be limited to 300 mg per day and less than 200 mg if you suffer from a heart condition. Foods rich in cholesterol are the following: milk products, organ meats, and egg yolks.

Whole grains contain a variety of nutrients that are good for your health. Whole- wheat pasta, whole- wheat flour, whole- grain breads, and brown rice are recommended.

Increasing your intake of fruits and vegetables can be beneficial in lowering your cholesterol levels. Fruits and vegetables contain large quantities of dietary fiber that help control your cholesterol.

6. Daily exercise. Exercise is a good way of losing those extra fats and increases your HDL levels. An exercise lasting for about 30 to 60 minutes can do great wonders for your body.

7. Stop smoking. Smoking is one of the main factors for increased levels of cholesterol. Studies have shown that after 20 minutes of not smoking, your blood pressure would decrease. In a span of 24 hours, you will have a lower risk of developing heart attacks.

8. Drinking alcohol moderately. One glass of alcohol a day has shown that it helps in your blood circulation but more than one may lead to complications. Moderate consumption of alcohol helps in increasing your HDL levels.

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.

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.