Glycemic Index 101

Glycemic Index Benefits: Lower Cholesterol

Chapter 12:

Most of the foods that you will find on the low end of the Glycemic Index are foods that are higher in fiber and lower in fat and calories. These are exactly the right types of foods to eat in order to keep your heart healthy and your cholesterol low.

Cholesterol is a trace molecule found in food that travels in our bloodstream and helps with some very important tasks. One of its jobs is to help re-form the membranes of certain cells. Another of its jobs is to help in the creation of certain steroid hormones that the body needs to function.

If we never ingested any cholesterol are bodies would suffer. But, there is a difference between “good” cholesterol and “bad” cholesterol. Bad cholesterol is known as LDL, while good cholesterol goes by the initials HDL. These two different types of cholesterol although very similar in make up are very different when it comes to how they affect our bodies.

Having high levels of HDL in our systems actually helps lower our overall cholesterol levels and keeps our arteries clear and our heart running smoothly. The opposite is true when a body is tested and shows high levels of the cholesterol LDL. This is the harmful cholesterol that clogs arteries and causes instances of heart arrhythmia, heart attacks, and strokes.

The amazing thing about all of this is that the main supplier of this cholesterol to our body is the food that we eat. We are doing this to ourselves! If we decide to eat foods that are very high in hydrogenated fats, (that is, fats that do not dissolve or break down easily and that contain high amounts of LDL cholesterol) then we are endangering our own health and playing Russian roulette with our lives.

By following the Glycemic Index, you will be choosing foods that along with helping you to lose weight and reduce your risk of ever developing diabetes, will also help to lower your cholesterol which in turn, will virtually eliminate a plethora of other health issues.

Another health issue that people may suffer from who have high levels of cholesterol are gallstones. When there is an excess of cholesterol, the liver tries to process as much as it can and the excess is absorbed into the other organs of the body. Once in these other organs such as the gallbladder, the cholesterol can sit and harden and develop into very painful gallstones that in some cases may need to be surgically removed.

Doctors are beginning to agree that testing for cholesterol levels should be made more on a “ratio basis”. The ratio that is becoming widely accepted is 5:1. That means that for every measurement of one particle of bad cholesterol (LDL), we should have at least five particles of good cholesterol (HDL) in our blood.

The Glycemic Index will help you realize the goal of increasing your amount of good cholesterol while at the same time decreasing the bad. This happens because the food that you are putting in your body is keeping your systems running smoothly without any spikes or dips. When your body doesn’t have to use all of its resources to try to overcompensate for the bad food you feed it, it can spend more time dealing with other things. Things like burning extra storage cells of fat and keeping our arteries clean and our heart healthy.

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