We Can Prevent Heart Attacks by Adopting a Low cholesterol Diet!

All plans to lower your cholesterol start with reforming your diet.

The latter statement seems obvious to all of us now but wasn’t so in the 1950’s when the New York City department of health was amongst the first to discover that cutting back on cholesterol fats and calories was a way to prevent heart attack.

In the 1980’s the National Institute of Health formulated a low cholesterol diet plan for healthy people with cholesterol levels in the 200 - 239(mg/100ml) range and for people with cholesterol levels greater than 240mg/100ml. In early 2001 these diets were subject to review and more emphasis was put on the requirements of people with specific medical conditions and risk factors and was coined the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes Diet(TLC) . I have summarised the two low cholesterol diet guides in tables 1 and 2 below.

The total daily calories are indicated as 1,600, 2000 and  3,000 depending on the individual needs of the person.

Low Cholesterol Diet

For healthy people with total cholesterol levels in the 200 -239 (mg/100ml) range

                        Table 1.

Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes Diet(TLC)

For people with specific medical conditions and risk factors such as:

• High levels of LDLs and low levels of HDLs
• A previous history of cardiovascular disease or heart attack
• Type 1 diabetes
• Type 2 diabetes
• High blood pressure
• Excess weight

                     Table 2.