They are the biggest killers in America: Diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and heart disease. The most common causes of these deadly conditions are: Physical inactivity, fattening snacks and beverages, obesity, stress, and smoking. The shocking news is that these diseases are so easily preventable.

A frequent cause of blame is the unhealthy food choices people make regularly. It’s okay to splurge once in a while, but it is the habits you follow daily that will determine your overall health. Constantly consuming chips, bacon, cakes, sugary drinks, candy, sausage, and cigarettes will get you nothing but poor health, deadly diseases, and a ticket straight to heaven prematurely.

According to the CDC over 63% (that’s over 180 million) of the US population is overweight or obese and is physically inactive, resulting in tens of millions who have chronic deadly, but preventable, conditions such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and pre-diabetes. Recently the CDC reported that more than 70% (over 1.7 million) of all causes of death in America are caused by only three preventable factors: obesity, sedentary lifestyles, and smoking. The very fact that these factors are easily preventable is heartbreaking.

One of the major contributors to poor health is the excessive consumption of cholesterol. The body produces over 85% of the cholesterol we need and the sugar stores in our liver and muscles remain saturated due to physical inactivity. Because we are largely a couch-potato society and the food we consume every day is loaded with animal-based fats, the extra fat gets dumped into our arteries, belly areas, and under the skin all over our bodies.

Another major contributor to deadly diseases, poor health, and premature aging and death is physical inactivity. Most of us sit throughout an entire workday then go home and sit in front of the TV for another 5 to 6 hours while consuming large fatty meals, snacks, and sugary or alcoholic beverages that are rich in saturated fats, salt, and sugar, all of which contribute to increased belly fat. Shockingly, belly fat is the most dangerous kind because it causes inflammation in the arteries contributing to plaque build up in the arteries and insulin resistance leading to heart attacks and diabetes.

Yet another common issue is that people are unaware of how unhealthy the foods they consume are. When people don’t read nutrition labels they tend to consume very dense food and sugary beverages that are nutrient deficient. These foods are readily available in fast food restaurants and vending machines and contain loads of sugar, fat, and unwanted calories. Sugary soft drinks (which alone contribute to over 33% of all US obesity), sugary lemonade, sweetened iced tea, smoothies, lattes, and frappucinos, which contain loads of sugar and fat that further contribute to the accumulation of belly fat, make you more of a magnet to all sorts of deadly, but preventable, diseases. One of the worst mistakes people make as well is skipping meals which makes the body more efficient at storing and gaining fat weight.

Fortunately there are important steps to help you make balanced food and activity choices and help you start a lifestyle makeover process which will be your shield against deadly diseases as you age gracefully:

? If you have any chronic disease(s) take your medications as prescribed.

? Eat 3 main balanced meals, reduce your portion sizes, and raise your fiber intake.

? Consume 2 fruit and nuts snacks between meals.

? Switch all sugary drinks to water or diet soft drinks. Sweeten all other hot or cold beverages with artificial sweeteners or sugar-free flavoring powders. Limit all non-water beverages to a couple a day.

? Increase your daily walking activity to over 10,000 steps a day by making more frequent trips at home, the office, while shopping, and anywhere else.

The good news is that diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic diseases can be prevented, managed, and reversed with your own choices, actions and a lifestyle makeover. Now is the time to start putting these tips to good use and begin feeling better and living healthier right away!

George Tohme

Diseases are best fought when those in the high-risk bracket understand as to what are the risk factors involved. It is true that you cannot avoid the genetic factor but you can still keep the situation in your control by making a few changes in your current approach to life and living.

Bad Cholesterol is supposed to be a major culprit in case of heart diseases. It is a type of a lipid, a soft, fat-like substance. Atherosclerotic plaque, which can cause blockage of blood flow in the arteries and can also cause heart attack, can develop due to excess of cholesterol. Popular by the name of ‘Bad’ cholesterol, LDL cholesterol gets deposited on the walls of arteries and is transported to different sites throughout the body where new hormones are developed and cell membranes are repaired. On the other hand the ‘Good’ cholesterol called HDL cholesterol, carries cholesterol to the liver where the alteration process is done, after which it is removed from the body.

According to the physicians, the blood pressure level of a normal person is less than 130 mm Hg for systolic blood pressure and less than 85 mm Hg for diastolic blood pressure. Every individual should get his blood pressure checked at least once in every two years so as to know the status, and if any increase is found, the treatment should be started forthwith. If your blood pressure level is little higher than normal then get it checked once a year, and take good care if it is very high and then get multiple measurements to check out whether it remains that high all the time or fluctuates. Immediate medical attention is a must in such cases.

If you are suffering from diabetes, which is a chronic disease of insulin deficiency or resistance, then you are more prone to heart disease. On the other hand if you are suffering from type 2 diabetes then you can easily avoid it by losing your weight either through exercise or by taking balanced nutrition.

If you smoke, stop smoking immediately because it affects your lungs very badly, and not just heart diseases, it may also lead to many other problems.

A daily 30 minutes physical exercise or fast walking can keep you away from heart diseases and can also be helpful in controlling obesity.

Minimize your daily alcohol intake to three ounces or less. It would definitely be a healthy step. Include fresh fruits and vegetables, sufficient amount of potassium, calcium and magnesium in your daily diet. Avoid saturated fats and cholesterol to keep your heart healthy. Just a little care and a little awareness is all it takes to keep heart diseases at bay.

Ashish Jain
http://www.articlesbase.com/medicine-articles/diabetes-blood-pressure-and-bad-cholesterol-cause-heart-ailment-119984.html

Cholesterol is very important basic fatty substance that is essential for our survival. Over 85% of cholesterol is produced in our liver and we only need to get 15% from outside sources. The problem is that we are consuming way more cholesterol than what our bodies need from sources outside our bodies and that’s the beginning of the problem. Cholesterol’s only outside food source is the animal kingdom like bacon, sausages, hotdogs, butter and other dairy products, heavy creams, sour cream, cheeses, fatty cuts of meet or pork and lard. Coconut and palm oils are the 2 sources for cholesterol sources from a non-animal kingdom.

Bringing these 2 silent killers cholesterol and blood pressure are covered in an e-book titled “Lifestyle Makeover: Defeat High Cholesterol and Blood Pressure”

Moreover, we have become more than ever a largely physically inactive society. We are sitting throughout an entire 8 to 12 hour work day then go home and sit in front of the TV some 5 or 6 hours more while consuming large meals, snacks and beverages that are rich in fats (especially saturated fats), salt, and loads of sugar all of which contributing to more belly fat build up. Belly fat buildup causes the start of inflammation in our arteries contributing to plaque build up and insulin resistance and leading to heart attacks and diabetes. All of the daily unfavorable choices we are making every day are literally killing us.

People are also leading highly stressful lives and vent off by eating more sugar or smoking worsening the situation and mortality outcomes.

When people don’t read nutrition labels they tend to consume very dense food, snacks and sugary beverages that are nutrient deficient. These foods are available all over at fast food restaurants or vending machines and contain loads of sugar, fats and unwanted calories. For refreshments and hydration instead of water people’s main form of hydration are large SUGARY soft drinks, “lemonades”, “sweetened tea”, “smoothies”, “lattes and frappucinos” which contain loads more of sugar which turns in the body to belly fat (increasing waist lines and triglycerides levels that float in the blood to block more arteries.

That’s how people build their own time bombs by blocking their own arteries with their own unfavorable choices.

People are awesome at taking care of their home and family, awesome at business planning and forecasts, excellent marketers, excellent 1,3 and 5 year projection planners but their health (which is THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR) is in utter shambles and they may not survive these forecasts or may survive with major blows and debilitations to their vital organs due to all these risks factors that will tumble on their heads and make them magnets to all kinds of PREDATOR MANMADE DISEASES.

People spend a ton of money on outside looks and makeovers for their businesses, closets, their office, home but they neglect the most crucial makeover to their lifestyles which is the one that will protect their vital organs and spare their lives.

For someone who has cholesterol, lifestyle changes along with medication treatment and periodically monitoring cholesterol to track progress are essential for an effective Lifestyle Makeover and avoiding harms way.

If you are diagnosed with high cholesterol and if your doctor prescribes medications then take them as instructed every day. High cholesterol presents no symptoms just a sudden heart attack that can be deadly. I see it every day in my pharmacy practice that people believe that by taking medications they are safe and they can indulge and remain inactive. Along with medications you need to make balanced lifestyle choices, increase the walking you do every day, cut back on eating fried foods and sugars. Switch to water and limit all other beverages to a couple non-sugar containing beverages. Increase your intake of fiber from oats, whole grain bread, beans, brown rice and whole wheat pasta.

For more details on how you can bring your cholesterol and blood pressure under control log on to www.LifestyleMakeoverEbook.com and check out the e-book titled “Lifestyle Makeover: Defeat High Cholesterol and Blood Pressure” and other e-books to help you manage your stress, sexual health, consume alcohol in balance and quit smoking (if you’re a smoker).

Take a simple True and False quiz NOW and test your knowledge by clicking on the link above.

For more detailed information on any of these topics log on to: www.LifestyleMakeoverEbook.com and check out these information packed lifesaving book and e-book volumes: LIFESTYLE MAKEOVER FOR DIABETICS AND PRE-DIABETICS and four other e-books: Lifestyle Makeover: Sex, Stress, and Alcohol , Lifestyle Makeover for All Couch Potatoes , Lifestyle Makeover: Defeat High Cholesterol and Blood Pressure , and Lifestyle Makeover for all Tobacco Users . The author of this article is also the author of these volumes.

George Tohme
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/is-cholesterol-the-bad-guy-have-our-choices-been-killing-us-677960.html

There are many natural ingredients that can help reduce cholesterol levels and thus reduce the risk of various diseases associated with elevated cholesterol: arteriosclerosis, heart disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes mellitus, kidney failure, etc. However, until recently medical scientists believed that diet alone couldn’t substantially reduce cholesterol levels in persons confronted with high cholesterol problems. Compared to cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins (medications that block the enzyme that stimulates the production of cholesterol at the level of the liver), most diets were considered to be inefficient in dealing with cholesterol. However, a newly published diet has clearly contradicted such beliefs, proving to be as efficient as many existing cholesterol-lowering medications.

Combining a series of natural ingredients renowned for their efficiency in reducing cholesterol levels, the special diet can cut down cholesterol by up to 30 percent. Thanks to its remarkable efficiency, the diet is considered to be a good replacement for synthetic cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins, which are known to produce a series of pronounced side-effects on long-term use. The diet limits the intake of foods rich in saturated fat and simple carbohydrates and encourages the consumption of soy proteins, nuts, viscous fibers (found in barley and oats) and plant sterols substance with beneficial action, contained by non-starch and leafy green vegetables, as well as most vegetable oils.

A recently conducted clinical study has clearly revealed that the special diet is actually very efficient in reducing cholesterol levels and preventing the occurrence of multiple diseases associated with elevated cholesterol. The study involved the participation of 13 people, who were asked to follow the dietary plan over a period of one month. The subjects’ regime consisted solely of the following foods: carrots, broccoli, tomatoes, onions, beans, cauliflower, red peppers, eggplant, oats, barley, almonds, fresh fruits, vegetal margarine and soy products (soy milk, tofu, soy substitutes for meat). The study participants had the liberty to choose the amount of foods consumed with each meal and combine the ingredients any way they wanted. However, all study participants were asked to only stick with the ingredients included in the diet.

By the end of the study, all subjects had substantially reduced their bad cholesterol (LDL) levels and had increased good cholesterol (HDL) levels. The average reduction in cholesterol levels registered in all 13 participants was around 30 percent, very similar to the effects of statins and other commonly used cholesterol-lowering medications. Considering the fact that it produces very efficient results, the special diet can actually be regarded as a suitable replacement for treatments with cholesterol-lowering drugs.

If you want to find great information about many cholesterol subjects like low cholesterol food, low cholesterol food or many more please visit us at http://www.cholesterol-info-guide.com/

Groshan Fabiola
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/cholesterollowering-diet-matches-statin-drugs-in-terms-of-efficiency-67658.html

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Duration : 0:2:11

Duration : 0:6:35

Expert: Brenda Thompson
Bio: Brenda Thompson is a registered dietician and professional chef with the Westlake Market H.E.B. in Austin, Texas.
Filmmaker: Drew Noah

Duration : 0:1:11

Expert: Brenda Thompson
Bio: Brenda Thompson is a registered dietician and professional chef with the Westlake Market H.E.B. in Austin, Texas.
Filmmaker: Drew Noah

Duration : 0:1:36