a couple of years ago i came back from holiday in thailand and had a checkup for work. cholesterol was through the roof (pobably all the coconut milk in the curry? i have heard that coconut milk is THE worst for artery clogging)

now it's better, still over the limit though. but given that:
i only eat red meat when i go to a nice restaurant
i dont eat much eggs
i do a lot of exercise
i avoid industrially produced food (transfats etc), most of the fat in my diet is fish and olive oil
i use soya milk
i am 36

is the only thing left to reduce alcohol content? this is not excessive: maybe 4 – 6 spanish beers (= half pint) a week. I would be gutted but health is more important than beer, right?

does anyone else have cholesterol reducing tips?

Drink red wine.
Blame your genes & just get on with life if your blood pressure's OK
Stop worrying about it

I thought that research had moved away from thinking that you could actively control cholesterol levels via diet, but I could be completely wrong! 🙂

I've made this post on several threads now…

I'm not a doctor but Dr. Malcolm Kendrick is. He was a mate of mine at University and one of the brightest people I've met. His view is that Cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease. He has written this book which I'd heartily (hoho) recommend.

He also shows that lowering your cholesterol levels will increase your risk of dying.

Then I'd suggest eating lots of heavily buttered bacon rolls.

I was under the impression that eating cholesterol was not the problem.. rather there are other factors which encourage it to be taken up (or manufactured) and clog your arteries. Which is why some people can eat as much as they like and be fine.

Consultant friend of mine is of the opinion that geneticly incurred high levels of cholesterol are nothing to be worried about, my own doc said that diet & exercise can only shift 15% max off your c levels, so carry on eating healthy & living healthy & don't worry be happy 8)

Current thinking also says that is the ratio between HDL and LDL rather than the outright figures themselves. There are also tests you can do which assess your risk of health side effects as a result of high colesterol, they give you a %. Anything above 15% risk is not good, despite me having high bad chol (of which around 80% is produced by the body and nowt to do with diet) when weight, blood pressure and various other factors were taken in to account my risk was less then 4%. Your GP can do them or some are online but you need the data.