The research published in the Journal of Food Science and Nutrition revealed you can lower your cholesterol with unsalted tomato juice.
Cholesterol is a fatty substance that is present throughout the body. Every single cell of your body is used to make things like hormones, bile acids, etc. It is really essential, but when you have too much of it, it can be a problem. We divide cholesterol into good and bad.
So good cholesterol is called HDL, high density lipoprotein – that’s the stuff that is protected. Bad cholesterol, non-HDL, particularly low density, is if you have too much of it, which contributes to long-term issues like heart disease and strokes.
What pushes up that bad cholesterol?
if you have too much saturated fat in your diet, this can be the cause. Interestingly, cholesterol in your diet doesn’t really affect your blood levels and instead, it affects your saturated fat level in your diet.
How can I lower my cholesterol?
There’s a lot of things that people can do, – one of which is your diet. For instance, you can:
- Cut down your saturated fat intake
- Increase your intake of good fats
- Increase your fibre
- Cut down alcohol intake
- Exercise more
- Take probiotics
- Take medications if you need to
- Increase consumption of whole grains
The research revealed that people with cholesterol level problems will benefit if they consume a glass of tomato juice without salt every day. It reduces the risk of heart diseases.
Researchers tested nearly 500 people, including men and women. They found that regular consumption of this juice reduced hypertension or high blood pressure.
Also, the researchers found that in 125 participants with high cholesterol, the level of LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) also decreased.
According to researchers, tomatoes contain various bioactive substances like carotenoids, vitamin A, calcium and gamma-aminobutyric acid. Apart from preventing cardiovascular diseases, it also improves physical and mental health.
The researchers gave all the people involved in the research to drink 84 to 200 ml of juice every day for two months. It comes with a small glass. Do not put salt in it at all. Because the researchers gave them only juice without salt to drink.
What are the signs and symptoms of high cholesterol?
Most people find that when they’ve got high cholesterol, they don’t actually get any symptoms. So you may not have a clue at all.
Some people do get, in the long-term, fatty deposits like in the eyes or in the knuckles and some people don’t actually find out till they’ve had an event or a complication format like a heart attack.”
What are the risk factors of high cholesterol?
Factors that can put you more at risk include:
- If you’re not exercising enough
- if you’re overweight
- if you’re drinking too much alcohol
- genetics
It is noted that there are people out there who have Familial Hypercholesterolaemia which happens when you have a genetic reason for your bad cholesterol levels being higher than they should be. And because of this, people with this risk factor will need to take extra steps to get under control.
The problem with cholesterol is that contributes to cardiovascular disease. It blocks up the vessel and that’s what leads to things like heart attack and strokes. It is believed that about 1 crore people in India have high cholesterol.
If you’re somebody who has got Familial Hypercholesterolaemia, you are naturally at a high risk from these things and therefore you need to put in extra modifications to try not and mitigate your risk. There are things that you’re not going to be able to change like your genetics – you can’t change your age, you can’t change your gender.
But what you need to remember is that you’re a man in your 30s. Your heart attack risk could be the same as someone in their 60s who doesn’t have it. It just means that you’ve got to take extra precautions to keep under control.
