People on the verge of having high cholesterol were able to significantly lower their low-density lipoprotein (or, "bad cholesterol) levels after changing their diets to include such foods as nuts, oats, soy milk, tofu, and beans. Those are the results of a study led by Dr. David Jenkins of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, who compared adults eating a diet rich in nuts, soluble fiber, soy, and plant sterols to another group who consumed foods low in saturated fat the standard therapeutic diet for high cholesterol. The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, revealed that, of all 350 participants who were followed for six months, those in the standard diet group experienced cholesterol reductions of about 3 percent, compared to 14 percent for people in the experimental group.
Though ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava questions what methodologies the researchers used to analyze and track the participants diets, she doesn't think that there's anything wrong with people including more tofu, oats, or barley in their diets. A cholesterol reduction of up to 14 percent can be pretty significant for someone who has a total cholesterol reading of 200, she says. Though diet alone will not ameliorate the effects of very high cholesterol, this study does highlight the potential value of combining certain diets with medication to get pronounced results.
ACSH's Dr. Josh Bloom, however, is less impressed with the feasibility of the regimen, concluding that it's highly unlikely that most people will stick to these diets and diet alone will have only a limited impact on lowering really high cholesterol. In addition, he explains that about 80 percent of your body's cholesterol is made by the liver, so you can cut every little bit of it out of your diet, and you may still not see much of an impact. I guarantee you'll see better results by taking a statin. Noting the questionable palatability of the recommended diet, he adds, I, personally, would choose the Lipitor-a-day diet.
