All
of the above are cholesterol lowering foods – and I have nothing against any of
them.
Some of my best
breakfasts include oatmeal, lightly salted with pools of butter melting into
the folds of the steaming mound. I also like sardines – with my favorite olive
bread slathered with oil. I love
walnuts. Baked in Brownies made from
scratch with real butter and lots of sugar.
I have long been willing to cut back on the fat in the milk I put in my
coffee -- from whole to 2 percent.
Oh, how I
delude myself.
On my last
visit to my doctor, my LDL cholesterol (aka the bad kind) was too high, I
resolved to try to lower it with diet and exercise, and then retest my blood. I
don’t have a problem with blood pressure or weight, but high bad cholesterol
can put me at risk for heart attacks or stroke.
I
have a long six months ahead: morning
oatmeal with blueberries, but no butter. Sardines on Wasa crackers. Plain
walnuts. No bread from the bakery. No Hersey bars with almonds from the dollar
store. I tossed out the flax seed in the
cupboard – it was more than a year old and probably rancid, and I am buying
more. I switched to skim milk. More salmon, (which I love) and sardines. More
broccoli unadorned with sauce or margarine. More carrots and bananas. More lentils, chick peas, black beans and leafy
greens.
How will I maintain this diet? Try a little reverse visualization—negative as
opposed to positive picturing. This is
how I imagine food in the blood stream: I eat something full of saturated fat and
sugar. The goop goes right to the blood. It’s yucky stuff, thick and creamy as warm caramel,
sticky as deflated cotton candy. It adheres to the vessel walls, starts to dry
up but stays gluey just long enough to attract more goo and other bad stuff
floating around in the stream. Pretty soon the vessel walls are as gross and
tacky as the floor of a fraternity after homecoming. The gunk hardens like
taffy, like shellac, coat after coat of yellowed hard marshmallow stuff all
along a formerly sinuous circulation system.
That’s arterial plaque or atherosclerosis, and that’s what will happen
if I don’t lower my LDL. Maybe it’s already happening.
How can I get to it –
to clean the mess out? It’s all inside
my body like the pipes inside the walls of our house. Where’s Ms. Frizzle and
her Magic School Bus, full of janitors instead of kids, when I need her?
Instead I’ll try Draino for
arteries: Fiber and Fish oil. Flax seed
and fruits. Kale and Swiss chard. Oranges. Here’s how it works: Pour in fiber. Wait. Drink a lot of water and soon, like
magic – dissolving and scouring away at
the vessel walls, flushing away any coagulating clogs of LDL cholesterol.
Add a little Omega 3 fatty acids to soften and dissolve the lumps. Presto,
chango; everything is flowing again. My LDL numbers sink; my HDL rise.
Except this fantasy may be poppycock. If there
is plaque in the arteries, it’s likely to stay that way unless really major life style changes are
made. But there’s even hope for that. The
works of Dr. Dean Ornish suggest that prevention is realistic and reversal is
possible. For less fantasy and more science Web MD http://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/default.htm
and Mayo Clinic health information http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/high-blood-cholesterol/DS00178 have lots of information on cholesterol and
heart health. Also this month’s
Prevention magazine has a section titled “Make Yourself Heart-Attack Proof.”
Today, after putting in a new kitchen faucet, our plumber went upstairs to deal with our cranky bathroom sink drain. One look at what she got out of there would make your visions so vivid you'd never eat junk again! Nice technique. Keep us posted about how it's working. (Now, on to the Cherry Garcia FroYo...) ;o)
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