 So cholesterol is not a bad word. I've done a little bit of research of research about cholesterol, what it means to have high cholesterol, and how cholesterol affects your health. Keep watching to find out more. Hey, it's Kyla Denigno. Welcome back to another video in the Health at 38 series. So a few weeks ago my doctor told me that I had high cholesterol and that I needed to follow a low-fat diet as well as monitor my sugar intake because I was pre-diabetic as well. So I've done research into what is high cholesterol, what is cholesterol in general, and how does it affect your health. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. I have to make a disclaimer that I have gone to law school. I did not go to medical school. I am not a doctor. Everything that I'm gonna talk about here was found on a Google search. I did make sure I was looking at sites like WebMD or Mayo Clinic, things like that, some reputable sites. So everything I talk about in this video is things that I have found online, things that I've discovered while talking to my doctor. So please make sure you consult a doctor before you follow any differences in your food or dietary restrictions or your health. Okay, so these are all things that are relevant to me specifically right now. So first let's discuss low fat diets. I could not find one singular definition for what a low-fat diet is. Instead what I found was a number of websites that said that a typical diet, American diet, would consist of 44 to 70 grams of fat, which is about 20 to 35 percent of your calories for the day coming from fat. Now there are a number of different calorie numbers that are effective in America. Some range from 1,600 calories a day, others range to like 2,000 or 2,300 for men, all of this stuff. I mean if you can really get down into a rabbit hole into all the stuff. So in order for something to be considered a low-fat diet, it would be to cut that typically in half. So to have about 20 or 35 grams of fat in a day. One thing that was consistent on almost every site that I looked at was to limit dairy, cheese, milk, yogurts even and that is a really big shift in my life because I have a toddler so when we eat yogurt we're eating whole milk yogurt because she needs the calcium so I just buy it because she nibbles on what I have. Also when we buy milk we're buying whole milk. Put a splash that in your coffee, put a splash that in your cereal. Next thing you know you're having a whole bunch of fat on day. So I have been really cognizant. Now I did not toss the food that I had in the fridge but I am eating the dairy based yogurts very sparingly and as I've already mentioned I'm limiting the dairy creamer and I've cut out any dairy based desserts. Now I can tell you that I had a lot more success when I started looking up cholesterol. The thing that I found when I started looking up cholesterol is that every person has cholesterol in their blood. Cholesterol is created by a function of the liver and so what occurs in everyone's body so what happens is that there are certain foods that you can eat that will trigger your body to create more cholesterol and so when you have more cholesterol in your body you are subject to a number of different health scares. So these are three things that can occur from having high cholesterol for prolonged period of time. The first one is having your arteries narrowed. So without getting into too much detail you have a heart and you have valves and then from those major valves you have smaller arteries. So by having these narrowed arteries it is taking more work for your heart to pump the blood through your body. The other one is having a heart attack and then lastly having a stroke. So a heart attack occurs when there is a blocked artery in your body and there's a lack of blood flow to that area of your body. My doctor explained it and I was like what can I do to make sure that that does not happen right? Heart attack sounds extremely scary. I'm 38 years old. What can I do? What is in my control that can help me to not have a heart attack right? I definitely want blood to be freely plumping through my arteries through my veins and then a stroke is when there is a lack of blood flow to the brain. These are three really serious things that can occur from having high cholesterol levels for a prolonged period of time. Now prolonged period when you talk to doctors it kind of depends on what that means. I do have a physical every year and last year when I had my physical I did not have high cholesterol. Also I did have to go back to the doctor last August because I was losing weight in order to get off of high blood pressure medicine. The high blood pressure was a result of giving birth to my daughter. I haven't had high cholesterol for more than a year so that makes me happy. Of course if you go from having normal levels of cholesterol to really high in a short period of time you know there's all these different variables. So it's not like oh man I've had it less than a year I'm good to go. To me I was like these are extremely serious. So since talking to my doctor I've had a really eye-opening experience about what can cause your cholesterol to spike and for me specifically it is processed and refined sugar. Even saying that it hurts my feelings because I enjoy sweets I enjoy desserts I enjoy you know if you eat sweets in life you'll have a sweet life that's just how I feel. But processed and refined sugars are not something that I should consume to the levels that I do and they definitely have been a contributing factor to my high cholesterol. So what I am doing is I have minimized my sugar intake almost cold turkey. Once a week I will have a scoop of sorbet and even though sorbet is a lot lighter in calories than standard dairy-based ice cream there is a lot of processed sugar and sorbet and also I've cut out all kinds of baked goods not buying candy bars not chewing on mint or eating stuff when I'm just bored. I don't drink a lot of soda but I did start to drink a lot of fruit juice and so I've stopped doing a lot of fruit juice as well. So I went pretty much cold turkey on desserts and then also I have cut back on the cream that I put in my coffee because cream is dairy-based the cream I use is dairy-based and it also has some sugar in there as well. So then in terms of the low-fat diet what I'm doing is ramping up the raw fruits and vegetables that I'm eating. I'm also supplementing a meal with a protein shake, unflavored powder, just plain plant-based protein so I am drinking that once a day. Fruits and veggies are in that and then I'm also eating a plant-based meal. So if you're still watching thank you for following along with me and finding out some really really low-level facts about cholesterol and what a low-fat diet could consist of. I have an entire playlist called health at 38 where I talk about my process and why I'm changing my diet and why it's important to me. So I will see you at the next update. Until then this is Kyla Denigno. Bye.