If you want to live a long, healthy life, it’s important to make your heart health a priority, which means making efforts to keep your cholesterol levels under control. Over time, high cholesterol can lead to a number of health issues, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke, and more. Luckily, managing your cholesterol can be as simple as making a few changes to your lifestyle. In fact, one of the best things you can do for your heart is incorporate the right foods into your diet.
To discover two of the best ways you can lower your cholesterol through the foods you eat, we spoke to Sheri Berger, RD, a.k.a. The Plant Strong Dietitian. She told us that adding more soluble fiber and omega-3 fatty acids to your diet are two of the best steps you can take. Learn more about the heart-healthy benefits of these foods below!
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1. Eat more foods that contain soluble fiber
Fiber is an essential part of any healthy diet for many reasons, including the fact that it helps regulate your blood sugar levels. And according to Berger, upping your intake of soluble fiber can also help you lower your cholesterol.
"Soluble fiber helps to reduce LDL (bad cholesterol) in your blood," she explains. Eating high-fiber foods like oatmeal, bran, beans, barley, apples, pears, and flaxseed forms a gel around that "bad" cholesterol as you digest it, so that you're easily able to expel it from your body. For the best results, Berger recommends eating five to ten grams of soluble fiber each day.
2. Eat more foods that contain omega-3 fatty acids
In addition to soluble fiber, healthy fats are another great type of food to incorporate into your daily diet in order to lower your cholesterol. "Omega-3 fatty acids help to lower triglycerides, a common fat in the blood that contributes to high cholesterol," Berger tells us.
Luckily, there are tons of delicious options out there, like fish, flaxseeds, hemp seeds, chia seeds, walnuts, and pumpkin seeds—the list goes on! "Fatty fish such as salmon, tuna, trout, sardines, and herring have the highest amount of omega-3s," Berger says, noting that The American Heart Association recommends eating fish two times per week.
The bottom line
There are many steps you can take to lower your cholesterol, from exercising regularly to quitting smoking and cutting back on alcohol. And as it turns out, the food you eat plays one of the most important roles in your heart health. When it comes to the best changes to make in your diet in order to keep your cholesterol levels healthy, adding more soluble fiber and omega-3 fatty acids to the mix like Berger suggests is always a good idea.
