How to live longer: Three health mistakes raising your cholesterol and heart attack risk

Loose Women: Dr Hilary discusses how to live longer

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Research on ageing is at a critical inflection point, with breakthroughs in basic science and multiple compounds being tested in clinical trials. While the field is starting to have tools and treatments that target the biology of ageing and improve health, a deep and fundamental understanding of how they work, and the models used to validate such findings, is still lacking. Further, many people are unaware of the seemingly healthy foods they are consuming which in fact are causing more harm than good. What are the three “healthy” foods you need to cut down on to help with longevity?

Salads are incredibly healthy and are often a staple among the health conscious due to their high nutritional and low-calorie value.

The problem lies when they are doused in salad dressings however.

Many salad dressings are loaded with unhealthy ingredients including sugar, vegetable oils, and trans fats, along with numerous artificial chemicals.

It’s therefore imperative you check the ingredients list before you use a salad dressing or better yet make your own healthier version.

Trans fats, also known as partially hydrogenated oil, is estimated to lead to more than 500,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease.

According to doctor Sarah Brewer and registered dietitian Juliette Kellow: “Artificial trans-fats raise bad cholesterol and lower good cholesterol levels.

“Avoid such fats, mostly hidden in processed foods or dressings.

“Saturated fats tend to be solid at room temperature and increase levels of cholesterol in the blood.

“It is imperative to limit your intake of these foods.”

Fruit juices have been dubbed liquid sugar and drinking large amounts of the drink could be increasing your waistline, raising your cholesterol levels and risking type 2 diabetes.

Unfortunately, most fruit juice you find in the grocery store isn’t really fruit juice.

Sometimes they don’t have any actual fruit in them, but rather chemicals which taste like fruit and are more often than not basically fruit-flavoured sugar water.

Manufacturers often take out most of the good stuff in fruit juices including the fibre content with the main component being left of just sugar.

In fact, fruit juice actually contains a similar amount of sugar as a sugar-sweetened beverage.

A diet high in sugar and low in fibre can quickly imbalance a person’s microbial diversity in the gut.

Microbes in the gut can generate cravings for foods that help their growth or suppress their competitor’s growth.

The imbalance of gut microbiota impacts a person’s cravings for sugar creating a vicious cycle.

Phytosterols are nutrients that are basically like plant versions of cholesterol.

Some studies have shown that they can lower blood cholesterol in humans.

For this reason, they’re often added to processed foods that are then marketed as “cholesterol lowering” and claimed to help prevent heart disease.

However, studies have shown that despite lowering cholesterol levels, phytosterols have negative effects on the cardiovascular system and may even increase the risk of heart disease and death.
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