Depending on how, where and when you get your cholesterol tested, the reading can vary by as much as 40 points in either direction. To get the most reliable reading, follow these guidelines.
Don’t do it at the mall, Those quickie finger-stick tests can be wildly inaccurate for a number of reasons, ranging from poor [...]
So mostly I stick to good food. My chief motivation for improving my diet is the new awareness I have of my heart itself. It feels more exposed now, unprotected, a fragile dove beating its wings in my ribcage. My idea of a good workout once centered on the muscles I wanted other people [...]
Once every two weeks or so, alone with my sin, I would yield. There is a bakery near where I work that makes a napoleon that Napoleon himself would have esteemed. The crème oozes out under a hundred stories of sheaf pastry collapsing beneath my teeth like a high-rise in an earthquake movie. I [...]
I became a food-label reader. I cased out the candy machine at my office and said a found farewell to fat-laden
GOOD VS. BAD CHOLESTEROL
Pure cholesterol is an odorless, white, waxy, powdery substance. You can’t taste it in the foods you eat, and you can’t see it. Despite all its bad press, your body needs it [...]
The good news was that there were two other risk factors I could do something about—exercise and diet. I exercise regularly, which she told me was a plus, In fact, the Centers for Disease Control say that sedentary living, not high cholesterol, is the leading preventable cause of coronary death in this country—sedentary people have [...]
That night I threw out the Häagen-Dazs Swiss Almond Vanilla and the frozen pepperoni French-bread pizzas lurking at the back of the freezer. I bought oatmeal, skm milk and half a grocery cart of fruits and vegetables. If a hair shirt would have helped, I would’ve gotten one of those, too. I also called my [...]
You’re sort of slim, sort of fit, and the doctor has told you it’s now or never. Here’s what you can do when your cholesterol test comes back high.
MY FACE MUST HAVE gone ashen that day six months ago at my health club when Lou read me my results at the while-u-wait cholesterol screening. Lou [...]