Keeping Healthy With Good Cholesterol

When we hear the word cholesterol, we are immediately put off and get disgusted because it is often associated with sickness and diseases.  A lot of people are suffering from health problems because of the high cholesterol levels in their blood.   We conjure images of fats, blocked arteries, people getting stroke and heart attacks with cholesterol. But then, the truth of the matter is that not all cholesterol is bad cholesterol. In fact, there is a good kind of cholesterol that brings benefits to your body when taken. Besides, as for bad cholesterol, even if you take it, you can actually control its levels. For example, American ginseng can help you regulate the levels of LDL, or the so-called “bad cholesterol” in your body, thus creating a balance needed for you to properly function and avoid those diseases.

Credits: Body Building

There are things that you can do to help increase your “good cholesterol” and lower your “bad cholesterol.”  It is just a matter of keeping a balance with your activities and lifestyle and most importantly, maintaining a healthy diet.  Diet plays a very important role in maintaining higher levels of good cholesterol because it is in food where we get most of the cholesterol that goes into our bodies. A diet rich in bad cholesterol without the balance of good cholesterol, as previously mentioned, can do a lot of damage to your body. These proteins can get stuck in your blood vessels, producing a plaque that narrows down the passageways for your blood. Thus, when these cholesterol deposits build up dramatically and cover entire areas of your veins or arteries, your heart would need to work double time to pump blood and keep it circulating. Moreover, when there’s no more space for the blood to pass through, like a water pipe that’s pressured with too much water, the veins and arteries connected to your heart will just burst, and yes, this is deadly.

Thus, there is a need to watch what you eat, including taking in supplements like American ginseng.  This is especially necessary for some people who need to cope up with their cholesterol levels because they have a hard time controlling their food intake.  The goal here is to increase the HDL (the “good cholesterol”) levels or high density lipoproteins in your body. HDL helps in absorbing the excess bad cholesterol and in bringing them to the liver so that they can be broken down properly and expelled out of the body.

Reducing the risk of heart diseases does not only entail lowering the LDL or low density lipoproteins or bad cholesterol but more so increase the HDL levels by eating foods rich in this. Aside from taking in American ginseng, drinking  pure orange juice, eating whole grains, nuts like almonds, walnuts and pistachios, fatty fish like salmon, mackerel and halibut and using olive oil can definitely help.