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Originally Posted by willows  The Wikipedia article is very good, but it doesn't say anything about being vegan as one of the causes for low cholesterol. |
Being vegan in itself shouldn't have any detrimental effect on proper cholesterol levels. People who eat animal products get about 20% of their cholesterol from food. The rest is produced by the liver, so if you don't get it from food the liver will compensate. Cholesterol is produced from fat; saturated fat in particular will increase both good and bad cholesterol levels. Here's a good article that talks about increasing good cholesterol:
Tips to Raise Your Good (HDL) Cholesterol Levels. One of the things it recommends is eating more seeds/nuts/legumes: "unsaturated fats (like those found in many nuts, seeds and legumes) can keep good cholesterol levels high and keep bad cholesterol and triglyceride levels low."
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Originally Posted by openeyes low cholesterol is increasingly being seen as a significant health risk. Google "low cholesterol health risks" and you'll see what I'm talking about. |
Are you talking about low levels of good cholesterol or bad cholesterol as well? Low levels of good cholesterol are definitely bad, but what about the bad cholesterol? Less than 130 is considered good by the American Heart Association, but
according to Wikipedia as low as 50 is optimal based on current research.
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Over time, with more clinical research, these recommended levels keep being reduced because LDL reduction, including to abnormally low levels has been the most effective strategy for reducing cardiovascular death rates in large double blind, randomized clinical trials; far more effective than coronary angioplasty/stenting or bypass surgery. For instance, for people with known atherosclerosis diseases, the 2004 updated American Heart Association, NIH and NCEP recommendations are for LDL levels to be lowered to less than 70 mg/dL, unspecified how much lower. It has been estimated from the results of multiple human pharmacologic LDL lowering trials that LDL should be lowered to about 50 to reduce cardiovascular event rates to near zero.
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