Carol, from the reading I've done the total cholesterol number is not the first number to be worried about. About 50% of the people who have heart attacks have a normal or low cholesterol number.. The LDL and triglyceride numbers are a bit more important.....
I see you said you are trying to eat better for your cholesterol. I was wondering if your looking at the labels for trans fats?....These are hidden in a lot of foods and they contribute to heart disease and high cholesterol readings. I switched to butter and virgin coconut oil years ago and stopped using all margarines. When I started looking at labels I was shocked at the foods with transfats in them....
I look for any
hydrogenated oils on the label....even if the front of the package states "no trans fats" most of the time it's not true....The food manufacturers can get around this by making the serving size so low that if there's less than half a gram of hydrogenated oil it it it's legal to say it has none at all.....Ain't that a kicker....
I drive my husband nuts looking at all the labels. It's gotten so tiring with the bad products that sometimes I just grab one with the "USDA Organic" label on it so I don't have to wonder it the product is safe.....My DH and my son are diabetics which already puts them at risk for heart disease so I try and stay on top of bad products. We are not perfect but I have defiantly cut a lot out.....
They are also taking fish oils.....That topic is a whole other subject to go into. After weeks and weeks of reading about fish oils I found out there are also good and bad fish oils out there.....Sheesh, all this reading gets so frustrating at times......
I have seen a few articles about blueberries and cholesterol you could try looking up this info and see if it has any merit.....Hopefully you won't have to eat a bushel of them...
...Good luck girl, and don't give up, just get healthy...
