Food & Nutrition
Diet as good as drugs in lowering cholesterol
By IANS
Mar 21, 2006 - 2:31:00 AM

Choosing the right food could lower your cholesterol level just as well as drug therapy, say Canadian scientists.

David Jenkins and other researchers at the University of Toronto studied people who ate a diet high in viscous fibres, soy protein, almonds and plant sterol margarine -- all thought to help lower cholesterol, reported the health portal Health Day News.

The participants, including 66 women and men, averaging just over 59 years of age, were told to follow the diet for a year and keep records of what they ate.

They met every two months with the researchers to discuss their progress and have their cholesterol levels measured.

After a year, more than 30 percent of the study volunteers had successfully kept to the diet and lowered their cholesterol levels by over 20 percent, the researchers say.

That's comparable to what some of the volunteers achieved after taking a cholesterol-lowering statin drug for a month before they started on the diet, according to the finding that has appeared in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"The average person can do a lot to improve their health through diet," Jenkins said.

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