Only High Fiber Foods Can Lower Cholesterol

We all know that high levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol in our blood is a bad thing.

But did you know that our bodies actually need cholesterol to function?

Reducing Cholesterol via Food Digestion

We all have a natural elimination pathway for LDL which is related to making bile and digesting food. Bile is vital to breaking down food and is secreted into the digestive system every time we eat. Bile is also very cholesterol rich and is made using LDL. Picture an exit funnel directing LDL from the bloodstream to the liver where it gets turned into bile, dumped into the intestines every time we eat, used up during digestion and then eliminated through the colon.

But humans are designed to be efficient.  Therefore, we re-absorb any bile not used up in the digestive process so it can be available for the next meal. That means the funnel bringing LDL to the liver to make bile for the next meal doesn't need to be nearly as big and we can just keep LDL floating around in the bloodstream (keeping levels high).

That means a good way to lower LDL cholesterol levels in our blood is to prevent cholesterol in unused bile from being reabsorbed.

The original cholesterol-lowering medications worked by leveraging this internal cholesterol circulation. They were called bile acid resins or bile acid sequestrants and they trapped unused bile inside the gut so that you would eventually excrete it out. These resins worked pretty well, but were unpopular because they were messy to use, had to be taken with meals, and often caused intestinal upset. When statins came along, these medications all but disappeared from use.

How To Use Food To Lower Your LDL Cholesterol Levels

However, we can still leverage this bile elimination process through what we eat.  Dietary fiber diet acts a bit like those resins. We can’t digest fiber so when a bile molecule attaches itself to a fiber molecule, it will try to digest it, try to digest it, try to digest it, and eventually drift past the point where bile can be reabsorbed into the blood stream. Since the bile molecule needs to be replaced, more LDL cholesterol will go back to the liver, causing blood cholesterol levels to drop.

But here’s the most important point – to get the maximum effect from consuming fiber to lower cholesterol, you need to consume that fiber in the context of food.  It’s the FOOD that stimulates bile secretion into the intestinal tract in the first place. 

This is why Step One Foods are foods – not fiber gummies or bubbly drinks.