Cutting Back On Carbs Not Fat May Lead To More Weight Loss
In one sample meal plan, lunch was chicken salad with half an avocado, and dinner included turkey tacos with another half an avocado.
The diets were similar in terms of macronutrients and calories. The only difference between the two was the avocado the other diet had the same amount of fat from other sources.
At the end of the study, the researchers found that the avocado diet led to significant reductions in LDL cholesterol, compared with the other two diets.
To put the difference in perspective, the avocado diet decreased LDL cholesterol about 14 milligrams per deciliter of blood. Compare that with a decrease of about 7 mg/dL for the low-fat diet, and about a 8 mg/dl drop from the moderate-fat diet.
“I was surprised to see the added benefit ,” Penny Kris-Etherton, a nutrition scientist at Penn State and the lead author of the study, tells us.” It’s something in the avocado” other than just the fat composition, she says.
She says she’d like to do follow-up research to look at the bioactive compounds in avocados, which may explain the added reduction in LDL cholesterol in the study participants. It’s also possible that the fiber in avocados plays a role in the cholesterol-lowering effect, she says.
But one caveat for anyone who loves guacamole: When it’s served up with chips, the calories can add up. A mere half-cup of guacamole has about 200 calories all on its own.
Can I Eat Avocados If I Have High Cholesterol
One of the most well-known role of avocados for the heart is controlling cholesterol level. People with high cholesterol level, or susceptible to it is advised to take one avocado per day to improve overall cholesterol level. As a fruit which is loaded with monounsaturated fats, avocados may improve high cholesterol level within a week period of consumption. These monounsaturated fats destroy excessive cholesterol in your bloodstream and cholesterol plaques on the artery walls, thus keeping the cholesterol level under control.
Avocados can be made into a substitution of carbohydrate in order to promote lower blood sugar. If you are pre diabetic or suffering from high cholesterol, substituting carbohydrate may be essential for improving your health. Based on American Heart Associations research on both obese and people with normal weight, adding avocados to your daily food intake for five weeks improve the level of low-density lipoprotein , although these people do not necessarily lose weight. As the LDL level decreases, the risk of having cardiovascular diseases is also lessened.
Cholesterol And Healthy Eating
What we eat has an impact on our cholesterol levels and can help reduce our risk of disease. Try to eat a wide variety of foods from each of the five food groups. Not only does this help to maintain a healthy and interesting diet, but it provides essential nutrients to the body.
The Heart Foundation recommends:
- Plenty of vegetables, fruits and wholegrains.
- A variety of healthy protein sources , legumes , nuts and seeds. Smaller amounts of eggs and lean poultry can also be included in a heart healthy diet. If choosing red meat, make sure it is lean and limit to 1-3 times a week.
- Unflavoured milk, yoghurt and cheese. Those with high blood cholesterol should choose reduced fat varieties.
- Healthy fat choices nuts, seeds, avocados, olives and their oils for cooking
- Herbs and spices to flavour foods, instead of adding salt.
Also, be mindful on how much you are eating and whether you are filling up on unhealthy foods. Portion sizes have increased over time and many of us are eating more than we need which can lead to obesity and increase our risk of cardiovascular disease.
Ideally, a healthy plate would include servings of ¼ protein, ¼ carbohydrates and ½ vegetables.
Serving size can vary depending on age, gender and specific nutrition needs.
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Avocados And Cholesterol Are They Good Or Are They Bad
Avocados and cholesterola very popular topic these days, yet its one of the most misunderstood fruits out there.
Is it high in cholesterol? Is it low? Can it help reduce LDL? Will it make my high cholesterol even worse? I just dont know if I should be eating avocados every day or throwing them out the window. Please help me figure it all out!
We created this article to tell you everything youll ever need to know about avocados and cholesterol, so you can tell your friends about it and eventually, everyone will be an avocado expert and we can all go on with our lives. So lets get started shall we?
Does An Avocado A Day Lower Bad Cholesterol
Eating a heart-healthy diet that includes avocados may lower so-called bad cholesterol among otherwise healthy overweight and obese people, according to a new study.
The findings dont mean people should simply add avocados to their daily diets. Instead, the studys senior researcher said, the results show that avocados incorporated into healthy diets reduced low-density lipoprotein cholesterol.
They shouldnt just add an avocado to their diet, but it would be good if they incorporated an avocado into a healthy diet, said Penny Kris-Etherton, who chairs the American Heart Associations Nutrition Committee and is a nutrition expert at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.
People should be eating a heart-healthy diet to lower the risk of heart disease, write Kris-Etherton and her colleagues in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Only 5 to 6 percent of calories should come from saturated fatty acids, which are found in foods like butter, fatty meat and cheese. Instead of saturated fats, people should substitute polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids.
One earlier trial found that a so-called Mediterranean diet, with monounsaturated fatty acids from extra-virgin olive oil or mixed nuts, cut the risk of major cardiovascular problems like strokes and heart attacks by about 30 percent over five years among older people at an increased risk for those problems, the researchers note.
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May Lower Ldl Cholesterol
The bad type of cholesterol LDL is not found in any plant-based food. Only animal-derived sources such as meat and dairy contain it. So regardless of whether you use olive versus avocado oil or another type, you dont have to worry about adding cholesterol to your food by using them.
There is preliminary evidence to suggest when you eat monounsaturated fats instead of saturated, it may further benefit the amount of LDL in your blood serum. A 10% decrease in total cholesterol and 14% in LDL cholesterol were observed in a study that pitted a high MUFA diet against one that was lower in MUFA and higher in saturated fat.
Avocados Lower Cholesterol And Triglycerides
73.5 million adults in the United States have high levels of bad cholesterol , doubling their risk for heart disease. Eating avocados is one of the simplest ways to fight or reduce this risk. Numerous studies have shown that eating avocado can improve heart disease risk factors by lowering your overall cholesterol level while increasing your good cholesterol , as well as lowering blood triglycerides.
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Eating Avocados For High Cholesterol
If you have high cholesterol, eating avocados rightly can help decreasing the LDL while raising the HDL, which is good for your overall cholesterol level. Consider some proper methods of eating avocados below:
- Although containing various substances important for heart health, avocados are high in calories. Hence, consume this food source in moderation. Limit your consumption of one portion a day to get its benefits.
- Combine avocado consumption with exercises, which are helpful for losing weight and maintain your heart rates. These are important for improving your heart health.
- Replace your high-fat diet into low-fat ones. Raise your consumption of omega-3 fatty acid, fiber, and other substances beneficial for your main organs and digestive system.
- Avocados with bumpy green skins and cooked minimally are the best for improving cholesterol level. Avoid adding butter, cheese, and other high-fat foods to the consumed avocados. This will keep your calories intake minimal.
May Increase Hdl Cholesterol
This is the good type of cholesterol, so you want it to be higher.
A meta-analysis of 60 different controlled trials concluded that when unsaturated fats were used to reduce carbohydrate consumption, there was an increase in HDL cholesterol.
The ratio of LDL to HDL cholesterol was better in the group which ate the fruit. That would suggest there might be something else in the plant which is helping with cholesterol, since the other group was also given a comparable fatty acid profile but didnt experience the same level of improvement.
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More Than Cholesterol Free
Avocados are a cholesterol-free fruit. They also contribute good fats to ones diet. Why naturally good fats? Because the body needs some dietary fat in moderation to help with absorption of nutrients. Good fats do not raise LDL bad cholesterol levels. Healthy avocados contain 6 grams of naturally good fat per 50g serving, one-third of a medium avocado. This goes against a more commonly held belief from the past that fat was pretty much always bad for you, and that the best way to keep your cholesterol levels in check was to avoid all fats as much as possible.
But avocados are a source of good fats, technically called monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. In fact, more than than 75 percent of the fat found in an avocado is unsaturated.
Scientific evidence has shown that plant sterols, a group of compounds and phytochemicals found in plants, have cholesterol-lowering effects. They have a molecular structure similar to cholesterol, which allows them to compete with dietary cholesterol for absorption in the intestines.
Avocados contribute phytosterols to the diet. They contain 38 milligrams of beta-sitosterol per 50g serving. Beta-sitoserol is one of the three predominant phytosterols found in plants that are molecularly similar to animal cholesterol. In the intestine, research has shown that they can act to lower cholesterol absorption. According to the FDA, 2 grams of phytosterols per day may help maintain healthy cholesterol levels.
What Do Avocados Do To Your Cholesterol
Written By Michael Greger M.D. FACLM on August 3rd, 2021
Can guacamole lower your cholesterol as well as other whole-food fat sources like nuts, or is that just spin by the avocado industry?
Avocados are the richest known fruit source of phytosterols, the cholesterol-lowering nutrients found in plant foods, brags a review sponsored by the HASS Avocado Board. The operative word, though, is fruit.
Yes, avocados contain more phytosterols compared to other fruit, but phytosterols are fat-soluble substances. Most other fruits hardly have any fat in them at all, so avocados will obviously come out on top compared to other fruit. What if you compare phytosterol content of avocados to nuts and seeds, though? One avocado has about 100 milligrams of phytosterols. On the same scale, sesame seeds and tahini have 400 milligrams pistachios, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds have about 300 almonds, almond butter, flaxseeds, and macadamia nuts have around 200 and even chocolate has about twice as many phytosterols as avocados, as you can see at 0:51 in my video Are Avocados Good for Your Cholesterol.
So, yes, the avocado industry is right in saying that avocados are a healthy substitute for butter / margarine, cheese, cream cheese, but thats a pretty low bar.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What about adding avocado to a plant-based diet? Would there be any benefit then? Learn more:
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Can Avocados Lower Cholesterol Then
This is another popular question, and kind of the opposite of what we discussed above. Here people are recognizing the health benefits of avocado, and wanting to know if it can actually help to lower LDL or raise HDL. Lets take a closer look at that
As it turns out, according to WebMd, avocados can actually help lower your cholesterol.
In fact, there was a small study conducted with three different test groups, one on a low fat diet with no avocado, one with a moderate fat diet and no avocado and one with a moderate fat diet with an avocado each day.
Guess which group has the lowest cholesterol levels after five weeks? Yes, youve guessed itgroup number three on the moderate diet with avocado.
Although this study only included 45 individuals, and there could have been other factors at play, its safe to assume that the avocado is good for cholesterol. This is likely due to the fact that it has not only a high concentration of heart-friendly monounsaturated fats, not to be confused with trans fats, but also important compounds called phytosterols, beta-sitosterol in particular.
This one-two punch of monounsaturated fat and beta-sitosterol can help raise HDL and lower LDL, and also reduce the amount of cholesterol absorbed from the food that you eat. Its interesting to note that there are cholesterol medications that do this as well, i.e lower the production of LDL as well as limit the absorption, but the downside is all of the potential side effects that come with it.
Possible Weight Loss Advantages
The same meta-analysis pooled together the results for all applicable studies to find out what the participants weight, waist circumference, and fat mass were before and after.
When comparing diets high and low in MUFA, there wasnt a statistically significant difference in body weight. However when they compared the high MUFA diets to low fat diets in general, they did find a significant improvement.
An average of 1.71 kg more weight was lost on the diets high in MUFA when compared to low fat .
To be clear, this analysis did not take into account the source of foods the MUFA was coming from, but at 70%, avocado oil is one of the richest natural sources. Olive oil is slightly higher at 73%, but most others are dramatically lower peanut oil is 48%, sesame is 40%, corn is 25%, soybean and vegetable come in at 24%, while sunflower and grapeseed are 16%.
Coconut oil is lowest at just 6% MUFA, but its really not fair to lump that one in with the others. Coconut is mostly MCT oil which is a good form of saturated fat. Its digested in a totally different way than all those long chain forms.
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What This Might Mean
There just isnt enough research one way or another to claim the fruit or the oil made from it is dangerous. If you make the assumption that based on that study its mutagenic, then the next question would be whats causing that side effect.
Since the fatty acid profile of avocado oil vs olive oil isnt very different, it suggests these types fats are not the problem. If they were, we would expect to see similar mutagenic findings for olive oil.
Since refined oils are just that highly purified fat it would suggest that if there is a problematic compound in this fruit, only trace amounts would be present in the refined oil made from it.
In short, that study is a stronger case against eating whole avocados versus cooking with the oil.
But remember, all of this is theoretical. The only thing that we know for sure is that a study done at a cancer hospital in India found that the fruit and leaf in concentrations as little as 0.01% caused startling numbers of DNA mutations in the cultured human white bloods cells. That is concerning, but evaluating the same in the human body is a different thing, which has not been done.
Does the same happen after this food is digested? That deserves some serious research.
Avocados And Cholesterol An Introduction
Lets start off with something you might not have been aware of. The avocado is actually a fruit, not a vegetable as many people mistake it for. Want to hear something even more surprising? Its a berry! Yes, you read that right, an avocado is a berry, which is defined as a fleshy fruit that is produced from a single ovary. Crazy huh? Now when you see avocado as an option in your smoothie, it might make more sense!
This berry is also one of the healthiest fruits around, just packed with important nutrients including fiber, a variety of essential vitamins, potassium, pantothenic acid and copper. Its also sugar and sodium free. Which brings us to our first question
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Work With Your Doctor On A Lower Cholesterol Plan
Lowering your cholesterol doesnt mean going it alone. Your primary care doctor is a helpful partner along your journey.
Your doctor can work with you to create an action plan just for you one that combines diet, exercise and other lifestyle changes to help you lower and manage your cholesterol.
For example, losing weight and quitting smoking can be big helpers for lowering cholesterol. Quitting smoking can raise your good HDL cholesterol levels, and losing weight can lower your bad LDL cholesterol levels significantly.
But these two tasks arent easy. Fortunately, your primary care doctor can be a great resource to help you get started and find practical ways to stick with it. Plus, help with quitting smoking and losing weight may already be covered if you have health insurance.
Whether you want to quit smoking, lose weight or just learn more about how your personal health would benefit from lower cholesterol levels, regular check-ins with your doctor are key. They can also perform cholesterol tests the only way to actually measure cholesterol to check your progress and help you make adjustments based on the results.
What Causes High Cholesterol
Some causes of high blood cholesterol include:
- Low intake of foods containing healthy fats healthy fats tend to increase the good cholesterol.
- High intake of foods containing unhealthy fats such as fatty meats, full-fat dairy products, butter, coconut oil, palm oil and most deep-fried takeaway foods and commercially baked products . Foods high in trans-fats include most commercially baked products and deep-fried takeaway foods.
- Low intake of foods containing fibre foods that are high in dietary fibre, particularly soluble fibre, can reduce the amount of LDL cholesterol in your blood. Include fibre-containing foods in your diet by choosing vegetables, fruits, wholegrains, nuts and seeds every day.
- Cholesterol in food this has only a small effect on LDL cholesterol -saturated fats and trans-fats in food have a much greater effect.
- You can also eat up to 7 eggs a week as part of a healthy, balanced diet low in saturated and trans-fats, without increasing your risk of heart disease.
Some people will have high cholesterol even if they follow a healthy, balanced diet low in saturated fats and trans-fats. These people may need to take cholesterol-lowering medicine as prescribed by their doctor.
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