With a high cholesterol and heart disease in the family, Phil’s doctor had urged him to adhere to American Heart Association’s low-fat, low-cholesterol diet.
“Your LDL cholesterol is 181–it’s down only 7%. That’s still too high, Phil,” the doctor said, sighing. “At your age (46 years old), you can’t afford to walk around with an LDL that high. You’ll end up with a heart attack. Here’s a prescription for —–, a statin drug. This’ll drop your cholesterol like a stone.”
Phil took the doctor’s prescription but never filled it. He’d read somewhere about the muscle and liver side-effects of the so-called “statin” cholesterol drugs. Despite his doctor’s reassurances, he was more scared of the drug than of the prospect of a heart attack in his life. Instead, he embarked on a program that included several readily-obtainable foods and included them in his daily routine for several months.
On his return to the doctor, Phil’s LDL was down to 112–a 38% drop. “Wow! That’s a great result on your medicine,” the doctor declared. But Phil informed him of his reluctance to take the medication and how he used foods instead.
Mention fiber and nearly everyone thinks of the dry, cardboard-like breakfast cereals found in the grocery store. It’s as if healthy ingredients come at the cost of taste. But the majority of fibers these products contain really provide limited benefits. Wheat-fiber based products like these have essentially no effect whatsoever on cholesterol in your body (though it’s good for your bowels.)
Fiber comes in a broad variety of shapes and sizes that you can incorporate into your nutritional program in interesting, delicious ways that can deliver powerful health benefits. With knowledge of superior sources of fiber in food and supplements, you can create a smorgasbord of fiber to substantially lower cholesterol.
But I already eat whole wheat bread!
Most Americans take in a meager 14 grams of fiber a day. Processed foods created for convenience and temptation (and profit) are generally stripped of fiber content. Sugary, dried, instant, microwavable, just-add-water foods in glitzy packaging are therefore miserably deficient in fiber.
The benefits of fiber begin when you take in at least 25 grams every day. This is the level of fiber intake recommended by most national organizations like the American Heart Association. But something unexpected happens when your fiber intake is 50 grams or more a day: cholesterol plummets, blood sugar is lowered, diabetes can be prevented–and you can lose weight, too.
The diet advocated by the American Heart Association lowers cholesterol around 7%. (Yawn.) Compare this to a diet with more stratospheric quantities of fiber (>50 grams per day): cholesterol is lowered 30% or more– that’s as good as the statin cholesterol medicines. (Imagine what would happen if you combined a cholesterol-lowering medicine and super-high fiber intake.)
Oat bran
Beta-glucan is a soluble fiber that avidly absorbs water and transforms into a gooey gel. This gel, as it traverses the twenty-some feet of intestines, is an efficient absorber of cholesterol. Beta-glucan is responsible for the cholesterol-lowering properties of oatmeal that you’ve likely heard about. You know what’s even better than oatmeal? Oat bran. Ounce for ounce, oat bran has twice the soluble fiber of oatmeal. You can buy oat bran in bags and boxes in most grocery stores. Oat bran is also more versatile. You can use it as a hot cereal microwaved in skim milk or soy milk (add raw sunflower or pumpkin seeds, fresh berries, or sliced fruit), or you can add it to yogurt, fruit smoothies, or protein drinks. Like oatmeal, you can also use it in your baking.
One ounce of oat bran (1/4 cup) contains 4 grams of fiber, of which 3 grams are soluble. Including ΒΌ cup of oat bran a day in your diet can powerfully lower cholesterol.
Pectins
Pectin is the soluble fiber found in abundance in apples and citrus fruits, especially grapefruit. In citrus, the pectin is most concentrated in the white rinds, not the pulp, so don’t do such a good job when you peel. The quantity of pectin in a single piece of fruit is relatively modest (around 1.5 grams), but when reaching for a piece of fruit, an apple or citrus fruit can be one way to add modestly to your net daily soluble fiber intake.
Flaxseed
Flaxseed is an ancient food, described in Egyptian writings dating back thousands of years. When the seeds are ground, the lignans, a structural fiber, are exposed and available as soluble fiber. (In addition to powerful cholesterol-lowering properties, the lignans are being intensively investigated for their cancer-preventing properties.) Flaxseed is available both as whole seeds and already-ground. Whole seeds need to be ground (e.g., in your coffee-grinder) to release the fibers. Don’t confuse flaxseed oil with the seed itself. When the oil is extracted from flaxseed to produce flaxseed oil, it can be a source of linolenic acid, which in turn is converted by your body to a small quantity of omega-3 fatty acids (as in fish). But the bulk of benefit from flaxseed is found in the lignan, or fiber, content, and the ground seeds are therefore required, not just the oil. water soluble bag manufacturers