Why Cholesterol-Reducing Diets Sometimes Fail

If you have been diagnosed with high cholesterol, your doctor has probably recommended that you make dietary changes, such as reducing the amount of fat and cholesterol you eat. The problem is that this approach doesn’t seem to work for everyone. For some people, cholesterol levels remain high despite their best efforts on a cholesterol-lowering regime. When diet alone doesn’t work, cholesterol-lowering drugs are usually the next step.

But there may be another solution. Researchers at Penn State University have discovered that people with systemic inflammation are less likely to be successful on a cholesterol-lowering diet.

Systemic inflammation is a low-grade kind of inflammation that can exist without causing any symptoms. However, elevated levels of inflammatory chemicals in your blood can increase your risk of heart disease as well as Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer, and other conditions.

To measure systemic inflammation, doctors often measure the am ount of c-reactive protein, or CRP, in the blood. The Penn State investigators found that people with high CRP levels were less likely to succeed in lowering their cholesterol levels by following a low-fat diet. For these people, taking measures to reduce inflammation in combination with a cholesterol-lowering diet may be more effective--and allow them to avoid drug therapy.

Certain foods and nutrients help reduce inflammation in the body, while others tend to promote it. If inflammation is a concern: