[positivepowerdaddy]

Does beef raise your cholesterol a lot? Even if it is lean?

[beleasha]

Any animal products (meat, fish, poultry, eggs, cheese, milk, yogurt, ice cream, lard) can raise your cholesterol. My dad lowered his cholesterol dramatically by going vegan for a few months and it not only lowered his cholesterol, it helped his GI issues, his inflammation and his mood.

[LITTLE MISS KNOW ITALL]

No. Cholesterol levels are not affected by what you eat, contrary to popular belief. Our body produces all of the cholesterol it needs.

What you're referring to is LDL or the so-called "bad" cholesterol. Actually, there is no such thing as "bad" cholesterol. This is a term that the drug companies have capitalized on to sell their products.

The cholesterol that collects in the arteries is actually the same as the cholesterol that the brain and other areas of the body uses. Its formation in the arteries is to protect you from something more harmful.

Doctors don't recognize dehydration on the level where health problems originate, but these problems are the result of dehydration. When you get dehydrated, the blood thickens and becomes acidic with toxins. This isn't hard to understand when you consider that this thickening is caused by the body borrowing water from the blood to inject into dehydrated cells. Taking the water from the blood causes it to thicken.

Also, one of water's important duties is to deliver nutrients to all of the cells and remove the toxins from the cells - and if you don't have enough water to do this, the blood will become saturated with toxins.

As the blood passes through the lungs, it becomes even more dehydrated due to the water loss through the breathing process (breathe on a mirror to see this moisture).

Finally, as the acidic blood is pumped through the arteries, it is under a shearing pressure that damages the interior of the artery walls, causing minute tears and abrasions. Left unchecked, these can peel off and cause an embolism in the brain or other organ.

This is when the body produces the cholesterol. The cholesterol is meant to cover and protect the damaged areas in the arteries until repairs can be made. Up to this point, everything is normal.

The problem comes in when the doctors don't recognize dehydration at this level. Therefore, they don't treat it (there's no profit in prescribing water, so draw your own conclusions), and so the damage is allowed to continue. And as long as the damage continues, the body will signal the production of more and more cholesterol - until the cholesterol that is there to help you ends up endangering your life.

The way to lower this cholesterol is to increase the water and salt intake. These are two of the most important substances for the body - and yet, the medical community treats water like it is just there to fill the empty space, and they treat salt like it was poison. Both of these are myths.

[lcramer2862]

Tiffany is absolutely correct. (Bco4Th6th's bizarre answer should be ignored!)

[milo_kerewin]

No. Actually, "wild caught" salmon contains more cholesterol than beef. And doctors recommend that people eat two serving of fish or "wild caught" salmon each week. It should be the highly processed carbohydrates you should be concerned with, like HFCS, alcohol, cakes, pastries, sugar, flour, cereals, soft drinks, etc. They increase your BMI which increases your risks for heart disease. You should also be avoiding anything with trans-fats which greatly contributes to a very bad cholesterol profile.