Doctor, Mr. M.D., what's the title of that song? It is called Good Lovin' by the Young Rascals. I wouldn't guess that.
That's a throwback right there. Everyone should Google this and see their outfits. Yeah, we should show that on this episode of Bringing It Home with Sarah and Tennille. And the doctor, when you ask the doctor, what do you have or what's going on with you?
What do the doctor say do you have high cholesterol? Well, some people say, what is cholesterol? Yeah, yeah. I guess we should start there.
Let's say this. September has been Cholesterol Education Month. So if you've gone this whole month and hadn't learned about cholesterol yet, it's not too late. We're going to do it today.
Right here on the tail end. We're going to get it in. Oh, hey. It is the end of September.
Guess what? Today is. This is a complete side note. Okay.
Today is National Podcast Day. I did not know there was such a thing until recently. Oh, no. Isn't that exciting?
So is this kind of like our own personal holiday? Totally. We should take off. We should.
Why are we here? No, no, no. But seriously, sending out a big shout out to all the podcasters around the world. We've got some really cool podcasters who follow us on Twitter, and they encourage us.
And so, hey, we just want to thank them. We thank our listeners for helping make this podcast a reality. Definitely. And before we get any deeper into cholesterol, I had a birthday.
Your girl had a birthday last week. Yay. So always blessed to see you another year. You've been fabulous.
Oh, thank you. So here I am. You just like fine lines. Yes, I'm just aging gracefully and doing it in a beautiful way.
So let me ask you a question. Okay. Have you had your cholesterol checks since your last birthday? Yes.
I go every year and have complete blood work done. Good, good. Yes, I have. But, you know, a lot of people, they align their cholesterol checks and blood work and all that with their birthdays.
What's a good thing about that, yeah. Every time you get older, you get a big check. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.
Okay, so back to cholesterol. Cholesterol. What is cholesterol, Danielle? Well, it's a waxy, bat-like substance.
It's in our cells. If we're human or if we're animal, it's already there. We're making it. Yes, our bodies make it.
It's used by the body. It has a purpose. I know cholesterol is kind of a bad word because nobody wants the doctor to say they have our cholesterol, but we need it for fat digestion, and we also need it to make some very important hormones, like progesterone, estrogen. Those are actually made by cholesterol.
Okay, and those are important. We need them. And another thing that cholesterol helps with is vitamin D, the formation of vitamin D in our skin. So we do need it.
Right, right. But we can get too much about the food we eat. There's kind of a magic number, I guess we should say. When you do get your cholesterol checked, we really want you to be under 200.
Yeah, that's kind of that number, you know, that we aim to be under, but it's best to be there. Now, there is good cholesterol and there's bad cholesterol. We're not going to get too deep in all this, but just knowing your 200 number or 200 below, that's not going to tell you how much is good and how much is bad, right? Exactly.
You need to have a breakdown of LDL and HDL. LDL is the bad. Yeah. L, loser, bad.
I always say lousy. Or lousy. H, happy, that's your good cholesterol. So you want to have higher of the HDL.
But the only way to know that is for the doctor to run the test and break it down. We can't know that any other way. And unfortunately, we tend to get a lot of the LDL stuff because it's in a lot of foods that people like to kind of, you know, splurge on. Things that are saturated fats, things that have trans fats, which you often find trans fats in your baked goods and products like that.
And trans fats are made in the lab. They're made in the lab, but they serve a purpose in our foods. They make them shelf stable. So most of the stuff that we buy, the crackers and cookies and things like that, they can sit on the shelf for days and days and days, are able to do that because of trans fats.
We can use it as a preservative. But it's not good for our heart, right? Exactly. They have those higher LDL components to them, so they actually lower the good stuff.
Yeah. They raise the bad stuff and lower the good stuff. So bottom line is you want to limit your saturated fats and your trans fats. Yeah.
Now, saturated fats tend to be solid at room temperature. Your butter, your lard. Meat. Your meat off your fats when you cut off your meat.
Yeah. When you celebrate a birthday. You might have a steak or something. You know me.
And I'm doing like cake. You know me. I didn't say never. I just said limit.
Okay. Limit. Okay. All right.
So we want to limit that dietary cholesterol to your is only found in meat products. Okay. So you're getting cholesterol from anything, basically from an animal. I got a story.
I got a story. I got to share it. I was teaching once about cholesterol to a youth audience. I think it was third grade maybe.
And I'm talking about all the different things that have cholesterol. I'm talking about meat and eggs and milk. So a third big boy raised his hand and he said, so basically what you're saying is, if it has a mama, it's got cholesterol. I'm like, a mama?
And I thought, okay, we know all the meat products, they can be traced back to a living thing. Eggs go back to a living thing. Concentrated sources of that are from your meats and even your egg yolks. So the cholesterol is found in the yolk.
So the people that eat egg whites, they're not going to be giving us a different amount of cholesterol. That's why you hear the, you know, use egg whites instead of, or, you know, when you're trying to cut some stuff out. Mm-hmm. And fish.
Fish is heart healthy. Now, let's put this caveat in there. Not if you batter it and fry it. You're taking the heart healthiness away when you fry it, right?
Right. Okay. Yeah, and I don't like fish, but I wish I did because it's so good for you. Yeah, there are some, you know, kinds of really good like cod and tuna and halibut.
Those are all very low and fast. There are some others that are very rich in omega-3 fatty acids. And what omega-3s do, they help to reduce our risk for coronary heart disease. So omega-3s are good.
Let's see some sources of those would be things like salmon and mackerel. Right. So I know a lot of our listeners enjoy those on a regular basis. Oh, gosh, my family loves them.
Yeah, so those are heart protectors. Those are fish. That plays right into cholesterol because cholesterol can put you at risk for heart issues. Yeah.
That's good. We talked about this earlier in the mic because it's also more matters fruit and vegetable in the mic. Yes, it is. So hopefully our listeners remember this, but we really want you to make half of your plate fruits and vegetables.
These food items, fruits and vegetables, are rich in fiber, and that helps to lower the cholesterol levels in your body. So we want fiber foods. Yes. And if you eat more fruits and vegetables, you are lowering your risk of heart disease.
Is it because if I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, I don't have enough room to eat the fruit and steak? Well, you know, there is something to be said for that. Because they're full of fiber, that does fill you up more. It does.
That's true. That's true. You can eat your steak, but you need to also have those fruits and vegetables with it. Portion sizes, though.
Anytime we're eating the cholesterol foods like the steak or whatever you enjoy, chicken or pork chop or whatever, portion sizes need to come into play. You mentioned fiber. Another resource for that would be like whole grains. Yes.
So this is our 100% whole wheat bread, our brown rice, our whole wheat pasta, all those types of things come into play. Because again, we got fiber, and that is linked to reduced heart risk. Yeah. And talking about fiber, most people in America do not get enough fiber.
So we would just eat the way that we should be eating. With those fruits and vegetables, whole grains, we would be getting the amount of fiber we need every day. It makes a big difference. Another thing that we can do to control our cholesterol is just to simply be active.
Right. And we all need to be more physically active. We need 30 to 60 minutes a day of exercise. And doing that can actually raise or improve those good cholesterol levels, that HDL.
The ones that fight against heart disease. Yes. Oh, wow. Okay.
So just mean how many minutes? 30 to 60 minutes every day. Yes. That's the goal.
But if you're not there yet, you can break that down. Now, you have to do all of it at once. Oh, no. If you want to do 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at lunch, 10 minutes after supper, that's fine.
Look, if you can only do 10 minutes starting out, do 10 minutes. You know, any movement is better than no movement. That's true. So we just want people to be more physically active.
But if you are a goal setting person, you know, the smart goals we talked about back in January, set yourself at all at what you know you can do. Right. And go for it. And if every day is too much, try to do every other day.
Or shoot for five days a week. Okay. You know, but being physically active raises that positive cholesterol level in your body. Well, speaking of physical activity, you know, increased physical activity often can help us lose extra pounds.
That's true. And let me share this. The CDC tells us that losing just five to 10% of our body weight improves things like cholesterol, our blood pressure, and our blood sugar, five to 10%. So that's not a lot.
And it can make a significant difference. It seems like just a little, but it can impact so many things. And I love that. Then you can celebrate that small success.
And if you want to keep on going, you know you can do it. So you can do 5%. And when you hit the 5% mark, do 5% of that if you're significantly overweight and need to lose a number of pounds. But it's just amazing that something like that can really make a difference in your cholesterol level.
And also, you're going to lose weight if you're eating more fruits and vegetables, family and your cuts of meat. So it's kind of all put together. Right, the whole picture. Yeah.
Definitely. And to top that off, one of the biggest things you can do is if you are currently a smoker is to try to stop smoking. And see, that's not widely publicized that smoking impacts your cholesterol. I mean, we think about, okay, don't eat food with cholesterol.
Right. And with no smoking, you just think about your lungs or things like that. But actually quitting smoking can actually improve, again, those good, those HDL cholesterol levels and decrease your blood pressure. And they say that your risk for heart disease starts going down immediately.
Sometimes I stop smoking. If I put down a cigarette and don't pick another one up, each hour that passes, my risk is decreasing. That is amazing. That is amazing to me.
Right. In this world of instant gratification. I love instant gratification. So you don't have to wait five years before you have a reduced risk.
Your risk starts going down the minute you put the cigarette down. So it's so worth it to do it. Yes. Yes.
That's awesome. You know, there is one thing that we cannot change about cholesterol. What's that? Even if you do everything right, you can inherit it.
It can be through your wedding. Yeah. It is in my family. Yeah.
Yeah. And I mean, I'm sure we've got some people listening to say, well, I exercise and I eat fiber and I eat, you know, I do all these things, but you still may have a cholesterol issue. Right. Sometimes there's medication involved.
Yes. And the worst thing that you can do is ignore it. You need to know your numbers. It won't go away.
Right. And you need to do all the things that we've talked about, exercise, eating more fruits and vegetables, eating those heart-healthy meats like your fish, you know, limiting those high healthy health foods, your meats, eggs, things like that. Right. And, you know, work closely with your medical team.
You know, talk to your doctor about it. Even if your cholesterol has not reached the 200 level yet, but you're starting to see an inch up. And, you know, I recommend that everybody keeps their blood results from the previous year so that you can compare them. That's a great idea.
That's a way for you to see subtle changes. You know, if everything is going up five points each year, five points each year, you're on a trend. Right. And you kind of want to reverse that trend.
So it's good to keep up with what your numbers are so that you can see those trends early. Yeah. And then you'll notice some changes like you need to make. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. And all the things we talked about today, surely you can find one that you can go to work on. Yeah. Yeah.
That we can start with today. So even though we're ending Cholesterol Education Month today, this is something we have to think about for the rest of our lives. Every day. Yes.
Yes. So we definitely want to keep this conversation going. And again, if you have any concerns about your numbers or you want to know what the breakdown is, talk to your doctor about it. That's what they're there for.
That's your best resource to find out about your numbers. Exactly. So thank you for joining us on this episode. In the words of Mr.
Bob Marley, I don't know what his cholesterol level was. I don't know. But he still wants you to live the life you love. And love the life you live.
Bye.