Biggest Loser - Weight loss blog

High Cholesterol Treatments

The main goal for treating high cholesterol is to lower the LDL levels enough to reduce the risk of developing heart disease. The higher the risk, the lower the LDL goal must be. There are two main ways to treat high cholesterol:

Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC):
This includes a cholesterol-lowering diet, physical activity, and weight management. TLC is meant for anyone who has elevated LDL levels. TLC is a set of things that a person has to follow in order to achieve the targeted low levels of LDL cholesterol. TLC consists of:

The TLC Diet: This diet consists of a low-saturated-fat, low-cholesterol eating plan that begets less than:

• 7% of calories from saturated fat
• 200mg of dietary cholesterol per day

This diet recommends only limited calories for desirable weight maintenance and avoiding weight gain. LDL levels can also be lowed by increasing the amount of soluble fiber in the diet. Certain food products that contain plant stanols or plant sterols can also be added to the TLC diet to boost its LDL-lowering power.

Weight Management: Weight loss can also help lower LDL levels and this is especially important for those with a cluster of risk factors that include high triglyceride and/or low HDL levels and being overweight with a large waist circumference (more than 40 inches for men and more than 35 inches for women).

Physical Activity: Regular physical activity is recommended for everyone. It can help raise HDL levels and lower LDL levels. This is especially important for those people who have high triglyceride and/or low HDL levels and are overweight with a large waist measurement.

Drug Treatment: Cholesterol-lowering drugs are used in combination with TLC treatment to achieve positive results.

Any drug treatment to lower cholesterol is best combined with lifestyle changes to achieve positive and long-term results. This will help keep you on low doses of medicine. Several cholesterol lowering drug treatments include:

• Statins: These drugs, including Crestor, effectively lower LDL levels and are safe for most people
• Bile acid sequestrates: Also help lower LDL levels and can be used alone or in combination with statin drugs
• Nicotinic acid: Helps lower LDL levels and triglycerides while raising HDL levels
• Fibric acids: Helps lower LDL levels somewhat but are used mainly to treat high triglyceride and low HDL levels
• Cholesterol absorption inhibitors: helps lower LDL levels and can be used alone or in combination with statin drugs

Your doctor is the best person to help decide which type of drug is best for you.

To further reduce high cholesterol you must control other risk factors like:

• High blood pressure
• Stress
• Smoking

Lowering cholesterol levels brings on certain benefits:

• For every one percent fall in blood cholesterol levels, you reduce your risk for heart disease by two percent
• Even in patients with heart disease, lowering cholesterol levels will significantly reduce the risk for death and disability
• As blood cholesterol exceeds 220 ml/dl (milligrams per deciliter), risk for heart disease increases at a more rapid rate
• Blood cholesterol levels must be measured at least once every five years in all adults

Finding a weight loss programme is easy but it is extremely tough to stay committed to it. This article offers you helpful tips to keep you motivated for weight loss so that you can achieve lasting results.

• Drink lots of water – Drinking plenty of plain unflavoured water throughout the day helps to revitalize the body’s cells and help them to operate more efficiently. As a result, you get more energy for exercising to burn off fat. Besides, water acts as a solvent for many vitamins and minerals. It also enables transfer of nutrients into and wastes out of cells, which helps the body to function properly.
• You need to exercise – Excessive dieting is not the right solution for healthy weight loss. Take up an activity that you enjoy or plan your exercise regime with a friend. This can keep you motivated and enjoy the weight loss process, instead of making it look like a chore.
• Take a diet plan which is sustainable for long – Don’t commit yourself to a diet plan that restricts you from eating your favourite food or makes you eat food that you hate. It is likely that you won’t stick to it for long. Go for moderate dieting plans that you can continue successfully for long.
• Find out why you overeat – Many people are inclined to go on binge eating when they are stressed, depressed, lonely, angry or bored. The idea is to identify your eating triggers and address them without food. This can help you maintain your weight loss for a long term.
• Incorporate lot of fibre in your diet – A better way to lose weight is to curb your hunger pangs by increasing your intake of dietary fibre such as fruits, vegetables and wholegrain cereals. This is because dietary fibre is quite filling; it makes you feel full even if you eat less.
• Consume low-fat food – Fat contains more than twice the amount of calories/gm than protein or carbohydrates. So when you cut down fat in your diet you automatically reduce energy intake without reducing food intake too much. Experts believe you should not consume more than 25% of your calories from fat - and that fat should be the “non-saturated” type.
• Motivate yourself on being healthy, not on becoming thin – By changing the perception you can keep your spirits high. Experts believe that people should train their mind towards eating healthier food rather that worrying about foods that affect your body’s weight. This helps you stay committed towards weight loss.

With numerous weight loss treatments in the market promising quick results, Tesofensine is another breakthrough in similar line of products. Tesofensine promises to produce a weight loss that is twice of what currently approved drugs can do for you. However, the drug is still in phase III trials to prove for its efficacy and safety.

Tesofensine is being tested by Neurosearch, a Danish pharmaceutical company. Tesofensine is categorized as a serotonin-noradrenaline-dopamine reuptake inhibitor. Inhibiting these chemicals to be reabsorbed by central nervous system suppress ones appetite, or make one feel full. Under trials patients continuing with 0.5mg tesofensine achieved a total weight loss of 12-13kg at 24 weeks. So it may have the potential to achieve greater reductions in weight as compared to other similar drugs in the market.

Obesity has become the number one preventable cause of death in many developed countries. It is caused due to the unhealthy eating habits of people combined with a sedentary lifestyle. Obesity can lead to various serious health problems and is often a precursor of health problems such as diabetes, blood pressure, fatigue, sleeping problems, joint pain and many more. Obesity or weight gain must be addressed on time to avoid it from developing into morbid obesity. The body mass index for morbid obesity is 40, obesity is 30 and overweight is 27+.

How to select the best weight loss pills?
You should start using weight loss pills if your BMI is more than 27, so that you don’t become obese. There are many weight loss pills on the market; they can be classified as over-the-counter weight loss pills and prescription pills. Out of both these types of pills, prescription pills are clinically tested and approved by health authorities whereas, over-the-counter pills are not tested or proven and health authorities have no regulation over them. So it is safer to opt for prescription pills. Select best weight loss pills after doing some research online and find out about the pros and cons of all prescription pills.

Which are the effective prescription weight loss pills?
The two most popular prescription weight loss pills are Reductil and Xenical. Both these pills effectively help you to lose weight but in different ways. Reductil is an appetite suppressant and helps people by making them feel less hungry to control their diet whereas Xenical is a fat blocker and does not allow the fat from the diet to be absorbed by your body. Depending on your need and body type, a doctor can help you determine which pill will be the most effective for you. For instance, if your weight gain is due to increased calories and you can’t control your calorie intake, Reductil might be effective for you. But if your problem is excess amount of fat in the body, Xenical might be the right option for you.

How can you buy weight loss pills online?
Once you find out which of the weight loss pills is right for you, you can buy it online. It is very simple and convenient to buy weight loss pills online. There are many online clinics that offer a free consultation with a registered doctor, free shipping and many other attractive deals. Also, this method is very discreet. However, there is one drawback of buying online. Some of the websites are involved in fraudulent practices such as personal information and credit card information theft, spamming and selling your private information to third parties. Some also charge your credit card more than the said price with ‘hidden charges’. This makes it very important for you to take lots of precautions when you buy weight loss pills online.

Make sure you buy weight loss pills from a website that is located in your country and has a telephone number and correspondence address listed in the ‘contact us’ page of the website.

Source of Information: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/weight-loss-pills-frequently-asked-questions-answered.html

Are you finding weight loss a difficult goal to achieve? Small changes to your lifestyle can really make weight loss easy for you. Unsuccessful attempts to weight loss sometimes make it boring to keep efforts going. So just stop worrying about your weight, practice following changes in your lifestyle which will make your weight loss program an easy and exciting practice.

• When you are obese or overweight, it indicates that you are eating more calories than your body needs. You need to find a way so that you feel full without consuming too many calories. Eating lot of fiber with your diet will serve the purpose. Apart from making you feel full for longer time, fiber is always important for a healthy digestive system. Few sources of fiber include fruits, vegetables, whole grain, cereals and berries.
• Drink lot of water which increases your metabolism and burns fat faster.
• Regular walking or running everyday to burn calories.
• Laughing hard is great way to burn extra calories and work your abdominal muscles. It also improves your mood, making the weight loss journey a little easier.
• Get enough sleep every day. Sleep loss to weight gain are strongly connected to each other.
• Don’t skip meals. Skipping one meal makes you eat too much in the very next meal.

Small Tip: Stay motivated, stay focused, and start losing more weight.

If you drink alcoholic beverages and want to reduce your weight, it is good to reduce or completely stop your alcohol intake. As alcohol is high in calories but less in nutrients, it should be avoided for successful weight loss. You may find alcohol beverages and wine bottles having labels like heart benefits, the low-carb or no carb that simply does not mean that they can help you lose weight in any which way. Alcohol is not a good choice when you are planning to lose weight and reduce your body fat.

According to the different studies conducted, alcohol consumption can result in to many different outcomes like increasing waist to hip ratio, risk of becoming overweight and obese by eating calories with no nutrition in them. The concept of low-carb beers and wine or carb-free spirits are a boon these days on a weight-loss program and is simply misleading advertising.

Under normal circumstances, body gets its energy from the calories in carbohydrates, fats and proteins but when alcohol is taken it, it gets absorbed quickly for processing. Carbohydrates and dietary fats which otherwise need to be slowly digested in the stomach are just changed into body fat, causing the permanent fat storage in the body.

So why to spend on empty calories than on healthier calories?

In addition to weight gain, consuming too much alcohol is bad for health and can cause issues like dehydration, heart troubles, kidney and liver damage in the long term.

Loosing weight is not easy. You may face a lot of barriers once you set and pursue your weight management goal. However, according to experts, people who anticipate barriers and plan accordingly are more likely to succeed in their weight management programme. So before you initiate a weight management plan, anticipate the barriers you are likely to face and decide beforehand how you would tackle those. Experts believe that mental blocks are the biggest challenge that you may face during a weight loss programme. You need to anticipate those challenges well in advance and chalk-down a strategy as to how you’ll possibly overcome those.

Discussed below are some of the challenges that you may face:

• You’ll need to motivate yourself for long-term lifestyle changes that primarily include eating healthy foods whilst avoiding junk and exercising more. This may not be easy, especially if you have been leading a sedentary lifestyle for a long time.
• You should be ready to lose weight slowly and steadily. According to experts, this is the best way to lose weight on a permanent basis. So even if you are working very hard to lose weight, you should not expect instant results.
• Plan on how you could stick to your weight loss programme even while eating out with friends and relatives. According to experts, the best way to deal with this situation is to order low-calorie foodstuff such as soups and salads. Order roasted food items, if you want to eat more.
• Do not be over delighted with results. If you work hard, you may lose kilos and inches in a few months time. But you should use this early success as motivation. Many people tend to be overjoyed and often become relaxed in their weight loss programme. As a result, they re-gain the lost weight in no time.
• Your friends may ridicule you initially and may provoke you to eat your favourite foodstuff. Prepare yourself on how you can politely refuse them and stay motivated towards your weight management goal.