Why should I care About High Cholesterol, I don’t feel sick!

Your doctor may have your blood cholesterol tested, even if you are still a teenager. If the level is too high when you are young, it may stay that way when you get older. Even though you feel fine today, with high blood cholesterol, you can get really sick later if you ignore it. You may have older relatives that have had heart attacks or strokes. When your older relatives were young teenagers, doctors didn’t know a lot about high cholesterol and how it effects the body. Doctors have now learned that sometimes people have strokes and heart attacks because of high blood cholesterol levels.

There are two ways you get cholesterol into your blood. Cholesterol is made in your body by the liver. Cholesterol is also in animal products that you eat (like meats, whole milk, dairy foods, egg yolks, poultry and fish). You need some cholesterol in your body to stay healthy. It helps to make cell membranes, some hormones and vitamin D.

Too much cholesterol in the blood begins to attach itself to the small blood vessels. The cholesterol coating a blood vessel acts like wet snow, it sticks together. As more cholesterol particles go by in the bloodstream, the particles on the vessel wall will stick to the pieces rushing by. Like a snowball, the pile of cholesterol on the vessel wall gets bigger and bigger, sometimes totally blocking it. If a blood vessel gets clogged in the brain, it causes a stroke. If it’s a vessel in the heart, it causes a heart attack. The building up of this sticky substance happens over time, even faster if your blood cholesterol levels are too high. Many teenagers in America have had success in lowering their cholesterol levels, you can too!
A normal level for your total cholesterol test for your age group is 169 or below .

I am NOT giving up Fast Food or Snacks!

You don’t have to give up the foods you like. Most dieticians and doctors tell us that there are no “bad” foods for us. It’s the amount of them we eat! When your cholesterol levels are high, you’ll need to make better choices to bring those numbers down to healthier levels.

It is also important to remember that your doctor and family wants you to stay healthy and continue to grow normally. Having high cholesterol does not mean you should “crash diet” either. Most experts on nutrition will tell you that “moderation” is the key. This means that you can have a regular hamburger at a fast food restaurant, fries too, even a soda. However, “special sauce”, “…with cheese and bacon” or “giant size” would not be listed next to the word “moderation” in the dictionary! Stick with the smaller, less gooey and greasy versions of everything and limit your number of visits to fast food restaurants to no more than once, maybe twice a week. Add lettuce and tomato to your burger to make it more interesting, but skip the mayo. A salad is another great choice, just be careful of the added cheese and make the dressing low or fat free.

Be a food label reader!

You’ll need to become aware of fat calories from other sources as well. Beware of labels that say “cholesterol free”, these products may be loaded with “hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated” oils. The hydrogenation process turns a liquid oil (usually corn, cottonseed, soybean or sunflower oil) into a solid fat (like butter or lard) that should be limited. Popular items that contain these types of fats are snack items, like potato chips, corn chips, tortilla chips, cheese puffs etc. Good alternatives are the baked versions of these snacks, add some fat free salsa- a delicious choice!

To lower your cholesterol you’ll eat fewer total fat calories on average than you did before. A good start is to keep total fat calories to under 30% of your total calories on average. For example, if you eat 3000 calories a day, less than 900 of them can come from fats! Of the 900 calories from fat, less than 300 calories should come from animal products (saturated fats), up to 300 from liquid vegetable oils (polyunsaturated fats) and the remaining fat calories in olive, canola and/or peanut oils (monounsaturated fats).

Be Realistic and Honest!

Sometimes you will go over 30% limit in total fat calories in a day. And some days you will stay under the 30% limit. Your average total fat calories will still be OK over a few days time. This is how your doctor wants you to manage your cholesterol levels over your lifetime. He/she does not want you to feel like you are following a “special diet”. This way of healthy eating, tracking fat calories and learning about the way your body uses food is good for all of us! High blood cholesterol is not uncommon, and it runs in families. Your parents, siblings and friends may have high cholesterol too. As you help yourself, you may be able to help them get their blood cholesterol level under control as well.

I walk all over school all week, isn’t that enough exercise?

The experts on cholesterol management say “NO!”. Everyone should be exercising* almost every day, for at least 30 minutes. Exercise does not include 12 stairs down to the lunch room at school, or the one minute walk to your next class. If you walk to and from school every day, for at least 15 minutes each way, carrying some books, you may just make the definition of exercise. Increasing physical activity levels helps some people with high blood cholesterol (especially those with extra weight around the belly) lower their levels. Think about joining a sports team at school or walking the dog every day before school. Even fast dancing in your room to some good music counts!

*Check with your doctor before starting a new exercise program.