This might sound crazy for those who deal with cholesterol for the first time. The trust is some fats can be actually helpful for losing weight. For example, monounsaturated fat is beneficial for the human health for a couple of reasons.
Before we get into them, let’s see what this fuss is all about. Those people who need to restore normal cholesterol levels are usually suffering from obesity and other diseases related to it.
What Cholesterol is demoned?
When the cholesterol levels are too high, the patient tends to not only gain weight, but also increase the risk of heart attack and stroke and other heart related diseases. However, not all cholesterol is bad.
There are primarily 3 types of cholesterol:
LDL, HDL and triglycerides. Low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, is more widely known as the bad cholesterol. It may cause plaque in the arteries which eventually might lead to heart attack or stroke. HDL, or high-density lipoprotein, on the other hand is widely known as the good cholesterol.
HDL takes the LDL to the liver where it is eliminated. This is how body maintains normal cholesterol level. Finally, there are triglycerides, which are primarily causing blood thickness, which in turn makes it even harder for the blood to travel around the arteries.
In other words, the concentration of LDL decreases while HDL concentration increases. But this is not the only reason why people choose monounsaturated fat foods. Here are 4 main reasons why it is so beneficial.
It helps maintain normal cholesterol levels
As mentioned before, food that contains mono unsaturated fat can help greatly reduce the LDL and increase the HDL levels. This in turn prevents a series of serious diseases, such as heart attack, stroke, cardiac arrest or organ damage. Maintaining normal cholesterol levels through monounsaturated fat also helps keep blood pressure in check.
It improves glucose control
Having a poor blood glucose control is often seen in diabetics, and it can also be found in other people. Poor control of sugar or glucose in the blood can lead to very serious diseases, from obesity to organ failure.
Mono-unsaturated fat helps to improve this situation because it improves the ability to control insulin, which is a hormone that takes care of glucose in the body. This is achieved by adiponectin, a protein that is found in monounsaturated fat foods. Moreover, mono unsaturated fat improves the sensitivity of insulin, which in turn boosts the ability to cope with glucose even further.
It helps protect from certain kinds of cancer
The great majority of people are aware of how dangerous cancer is, therefore, most of them would take all possibilities to reduce the risk of getting it. Monounsaturated fat does just that. Apart from helping maintain normal cholesterol levels and improving glucose control, it can reduce the chance to get cancer.
A Swedish study has shown that women who consumed monounsaturated fat foods were less likely to get breast cancer than those who ate food with low amounts of it.[ref]
It is a good source for fat soluble vitamins
Vitamins are the only thing that our body needs that it is unable to produce. In other words, we only get vitamins from our diet, and ensuring that we get them on regular basis. We must eat food that is full with vitamins. Monounsaturated fat are usually found in such food as nuts, seeds and oils.
And most of these products are also great sources of various vitamins, such as A, D, E, K. These vitamins have a positive effect on our bodies, which includes making it easier to maintain normal cholesterol levels. These positive effects of vitamins are making bones stronger, preventing the cells from oxidizing, preventing blood clotting, and many more. [.pdf ref]
Weight loss – Yes!
Yes, it might sound strange, but increased intake of fats can actually help you lose fat. Sounds confusing?
Good fat prevents over consumption of carb rich junks
Here’s an explanation. If you consume monounsaturated fat products instead of processed fast food, you will feel satisfied faster. This will prevent you from overeating, while at the same time provide enough calories and nutrients that you need each day.
Too much fat and you will be gaining weight again. But if you do it right, it will help you grow muscles. And when there is more muscles, there is faster metabolism, and faster metabolism means less excess fat. It is a very pleasant chain reaction.
As you can see, mono unsaturated fat is very good for our health. But how can we consume greater amounts of it if we do not know what monounsaturated fat foods are?
The right monounsaturated fat to eat
Let’s go even further and discuss, which foods have most monounsaturated fat. You can find the amount of it in all products by reading the label – it usually provides this kind of information. But to make it easier, we’ll give you a short list where you can start.
Nuts contain lots of good fat including monounsatured fat
- First of all, most of the plant-based oils are rich in monounsaturated fat. On the other hand, animal-based oil, which contains mostly saturated fats.
- Substitute your cooking oil with olive, peanut, walnut, sesame, coconut or sunflower oil. Certainly you will see many improvements in your health, such as reaching normal cholesterol levels, and many others.
- Products like almonds and olives, both green and black, are a good source of it as well. Most people like to snack nuts and olives at a party, so finding this product and ensuring you consume it regularly should not be a problem.
- Fruits like Avocados contain a great amount of these good fats as well, and so do pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Sunflower and pumpkin seeds are also popular snacks nowadays.
Probably the best news for many people is that you can obtain monounsaturated fat and maintain normal cholesterol levels by eating none other but dark chocolate. You might wonder how something like chocolate can have such a positive effect on our health. Believe me, it does. Just before you buy it, make sure it is ecological and does not have too many additional ingredients that can actually do more harm than good.
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