Cholesterol, a fatty substance that can accumulate in the blood, poses a serious health risk when levels become too high. This is because it can block blood vessels, hindering blood flow and potentially leading to severe medical emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes.
Lifestyle factors, including an unhealthy diet rich in saturated fats, can contribute to high cholesterol. However, making simple changes to your diet could help reduce these levels, according to nutritionist Mays Al-Ali from Healthy Mays.
She explained that soluble fibre not only adds bulk to the diet and aids regularity, reducing constipation, but also helps detoxify the liver, which is crucial as cholesterol is removed from the body through this organ. Foods rich in fibre recommended by Mays include oats, which she particularly praised for their beta-glucan content – a type of fibre known to lower cholesterol.
“60 grams of oat bran per day may help to reduce low-density lipoprotein [“bad” cholesterol] cholesterol blood lipid levels due to the beta-glucans they contain,” she said. “The less processed the oats the more beta-glucans they contain which have the low-density lipoprotein cholesterol lowering properties.”
“Go for gluten free so as not to disturb the gut and organic oats. Other beta-glucan rich foods are medicinal mushrooms with shiitake and maitake shown to benefit cholesterol the most.”
Foods rich in fibre recommended by Mays include:
- Oats
- Barley
- Brown rice
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
- Dark green leafy vegetables.
Research supports these claims, as one study from Nutrients journal in 2019 suggests that dietary fibre can indeed assist in lowering bad cholesterol, particularly when combined with statins, medications used to reduce cholesterol levels. The study indicates: “Dietary fibre can be used as a dietary change to complement statin monotherapy in lowering total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and to reduce the prescribed dose of statin, decrease the side effects, and improve drug tolerability.”
It also highlights that: “Soluble and insoluble dietary fibres in whole foods have multiple non-nutritive health effects that help improve the lipoprotein profiles, and have no caloric value, and thus could be part of a healthy eating pattern.”
Furthermore, it points out the dense presence of dietary fibre in whole grain protein food, fruits, and vegetables, which makes them promising for disease prevention and reducing the risk of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases.
Adults are advised by government guidelines to consume 30 grams of fibre each day, although it is estimated that most individuals only manage about 20 grams daily.