How You're Raising Your Cholesterol

According to the CDC, 610,000 people die of heart disease in the US every year, making it the leading cause of death. It's no wonder why cholesterol and how to lower it has become such a hot topic!

Let's go over a few quick things first:

• Cholesterol: a waxy substance used to make hormones, vitamin D, bile to digest fats
• Low-density lipoproteins (LDL): the "bad" cholesterol that smoothes out your arteries. If there's too much, it can clog up your arteries.
• High-density lipoproteins (HDL): the "good" cholesterol that takes extra LDL to the liver to be removed from the body
• Triglycerides: the inside of your fat cells that is released for energy after you've depleted the sugar and fats in your blood. When they're not used efficiently, they wreak havoc on your arterial walls, increasing the risk stroke, heart attack, and heart disease. 

Cholesterol is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that we generally have way to much of the "bad" stuff and not enough of the "good" stuff. When you're getting blood work done, the ratio of your HDL to total cholesterol is more important than the individual numbers. Blood triglyceride levels are used as a marker for heart disease.

Whenever I talk to clients about their cholesterol, it's a common misconception that eating cholesterol (found in animal fats) raises your cholesterol. Really, sugar is the culprit. The who take in more added sugars have lower HDL and higher levels of both LDL and triglycerides. All of these factors increase the negative effects of cholesterol and the risk of heart disease.

The World Health Organization  recommended getting absolutely no more than 10% of your calories from sugar. It's even better if you can keep it at 5%! That's about 100 calories max for women and 150 for men per day. The average American consumes about four times that. 

Just to give you some reference, a single M&M contains 2.6 calories from sugar. One. When was the last time anyone ate one M&M? One cup of apple juice has 96 calories from sugar. Many "protein bars" are just glorified candy bars, with at least one third of their calories from sugar.

Do you know where all of your sugar is coming from? Check here for common, not always recognizable, sugar names.