You're doing all the 'right' things to lower your cholesterol naturally. You're eating the right amount of fibre, you're exercising daily, you're even monitoring your fat intake. And yet your cholesterol level just won't come down. What are you doing wrong? Learn about stress and how it can tear to shreds all your best efforts to bring your cholesterol levels down to a healthy range.
STRESS BOOSTS BAD CHOLESTEROL
There are two kinds of cholesterol you need to know about: LDL and HDL. LDL is 'bad' cholesterol. Its produced by your liver in response not just to what you ate, but by what cholesterol levels your liver thinks you should have. (No prizes for guessing, when you're stressed your liver thinks you need a much higher cholesterol level).
LDL cholesterol is packaged by your liver and sent out in search of cells to enter. But its sticky stuff, and so if your artery walls have been damaged by colliding with other blood cell components, the LDL molecules can be attracted to the area, literally pasting themselves onto your artery walls. Now you've got a fatty streak partly blocking your artery, sticky enough to attract other LDL molecules and immune components. Before long you've built an atherosclerotic plaque that's getting bigger by the day, steadily reducing the flow of blood through that important artery. Not pretty, is it?
HDL cholesterol, however, are the good guys. Their job is to actively seek out LDL cholesterol where its not supposed to be (like on the walls of your arteries) and literally vacuuming it up, taking it back to your liver for disposal. Naturally, you want more HDL cholesterol than LDL cholesterol so that the good guys win.
HIGHER STRESS MEANS HIGHER BLOOD PRESSURE
When you're stressed your body produces more adrenaline (epinephrine), constantly. This causes the blood platelets that are already in circulation more likely to clump together. They're now more likely to stick to that atherosclerotic plaque that's formed in your artery because you didn't have enough circulating HDL cholesterol to remove it sooner.
When you're stressed your blood pressure is higher too. Now blood components are bumping into that atherosclerotic plaque with more force than ever before. The plaque is in danger of breaking away from your artery wall, releasing a torrent of pro-inflammatory, pro-blood clotting agents, and potentially completely blocking a smaller artery. Now you've got yourself a heart attack. Not what you wanted at all.
LOWER STRESS IS THE 'MISSING CLUE' TO YOUR CHOLESTEROL PUZZLE
Now you know that no matter how rigorous you are with your diet and exercise, high stress will bring all your best efforts undone. The solution? Find stress-busting activities that are fun. Maybe taking time out just for you; taking up meditation or yoga, or even making the effort to book talking time with a professional counsellor to get it all off your chest. There are a multitude of stress-busting activities that will help lower your cholesterol, just through less stress.
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