Warning: Your Weight Could Affect Your Sex Drive

The media often links the idea of lower weight leading to greater sexual prowess, but is this actually the case? In truth, whilst beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder, there is a strong correlation between weight loss and sexual wellness and wellbeing.

 

Obesity can cause all different kinds of related conditions which can affect your sex drive on a mental and physical level. Around 30 percent of all those who are overweight have issues with their sexual desire, sex drive, performance or all of the above.

 

Conditions including insulin resistance (an early indicator for type 2 diabetes) and high cholesterol have an ability to make a difference to your sexual performance, and this in turn can impact on desire, particularly when it comes to men. It stands to reason that a man who has problems getting or maintaining and erection gradually loses his desire for sex after a period of time.

 

When an individual puts on a lot of weight, the hormones in the body are negatively affected and start to fluctuate uncontrollably as a chain reaction. The chemical in the body responsible for sexual function (sex-hormone-binding globulin) increases, which directly causes a drop in testosterone, the hormone responsible for male sexual desire.

 

The more you weigh, the more you produce this sex-hormone-binding globulin, and so the lower levels of testosterone that are available to you, and that stimulate arousal in your body.

 

This, combined with other factors such as high cholesterol, can lead to a real drop in libido. High cholesterol has an impact as it can lead to the buildup of plaque in the blood vessels that supply the pelvic reason, and this can flow the supply of blood to the area that is the most important for sexual arousal.

Categories: binding globulin, desire, drive, high cholesterol, hormone binding, nbsp, Sex, Sex Drive, sex hormone, sexual, sexual desire, weight

How to Lower Your Cholesterol without Compromising on Taste

You might want to take care of your wellbeing and cut cholesterol from your diet, but how do you do it and still enjoy your food? Does a low-cholesterol diet doesn’t have to be all oat bran and tofu? Of course not! There are plenty of simple substitutions you can make in your diet that bolster your wellness and still keep you in a state of foodie bliss.

1. Instead of sprinkling croutons, go for walnuts: In carbohydrates, such as croutons, you’ll find a lot of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), also known as bad cholesterol. Walnuts, on the other hand, are high in polyunsaturated fat, which works to lower your LDL levels while giving your HDL levels (aka your levels of “good” cholesterol” a hearty boost. So the next time you have a salad, why not go a little bit nutty?

2. Replace cocktail hour with wine time: While research does suggest that a small amount of alcohol can cause your HDL cholesterol levels to rise slightly – which is a good thing – you won’t reap any benefits if you’re knocking back the mojitos and margaritas. Cocktails and mixed drinks with fruit juice contain carbohydrates which, as we’ve previously mentioned, is not great for your cholesterol levels. However, switching to red wine can give you all the benefits you could want for your wellbeing. Aside from having just 10% of the carbohydrate content of a margarita, red wine is packed with antioxidants known as flavonoids, which are believed to lower your LDL and boost your HDL. Still, alcohol can, in large quantities do real damage to your health – as I’m sure you’re aware – so stick to the American Heart Association’s guidelines of two glasses a day for men or one glass for women.

3. Swap cheese and crackers for edamame and nuts: Cheese and crackers are a popular pre- or post-dinner snack, but they are sky-high in saturated fat, which is one of the prime culprits behind high cholesterol. For all the foodie goodness of cheese and crackers but none of the guilt, try almonds and edamame. Almonds have been shown to lower LDL, while edamame – the boiled baby soybeans that are a common appetite whetter in Japanese restaurants – is extremely low in the saturated fat department. Although evidence is conflicting, some wellness experts assert that the soy protein found in edamame actively lowers your LDL. If you’re thinking Japanese soybeans sound a little complicated for an appetiser, all you need to do is buy them frozen, dump them into boiling water, and drain after 5 minutes.

4. Drizzle salads with balsamic vinegar: Any diet wellness or weight loss article you read will probably tell you to avoid salad dressing, or at least have it on the side. However, you don’t need to live a life of leafy dryness. Try drizzling your salads with balsamic vinegar, lemon juice or a nice shallot and grapefruit dressing.

5. Banish butter and bring out the margarine: There’s more than a third of your recommended daily value of saturated fat in just one tablespoon of butter (which, if you’re interested, is seven grams). Moreover, a single tablespoon of butter contains 10% of your daily value for dietary cholesterol. True, butter isn’t as harmful for your health as wellness experts once thought. However, it remains one of the main sources of high cholesterol and atherosclerosis, so switch your butter with a vegetable-oil-based spread. Anything containing olive oil will help you to replace a bad fat with a good fat. With that in mind, use olive oil (or white wine vinegar) when cooking instead of butter.

Categories: balsamic vinegar, butter, cholesterol, cholesterol levels, hdl cholesterol, high cholesterol, ldl cholesterol, levels, olive oil, Red Wine, Substitutions, wellness experts

The Most Debated Meal of the Day: Should You Skip Breakfast?

Categories: blood pressure, calorie breakfast, calorie dinner, heart health, high blood, high cholesterol, Lose weight, obese women, skip breakfast, Skipping Breakfast, weight

Heart Health Meets Mental Health: The Damage of Cholesterol

If you have high cholesterol, it may not just be your physical wellbeing, but also your mental health at stake. This is according to a study published in the online journal PLOS ONE, which found that people with raised cholesterol don’t just have an increased risk of heart disease – they may be more likely to develop dementia.

It has already been established that high levels of cholesterol are significantly linked to the brain plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Now, US scientists have discovered the reason which high cholesterol levels damages your brain, as well as your blood vessels. The researchers at the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome and University of Colorado found that cholesterol wreaks havoc on the orderly process of cell division. This insight was discovered when the team was investigating two much rarer disorders; Down Syndrome and Niemann Pick-C disease.

The researchers say that cholesterol, particularly in the ‘bad’ LDL form, causes your cells, as well as the cells of mice, to divide incorrectly and distribute their already-duplicated chromosomes unequally to the next generation. This means that your body accumulates defective cells with the wrong number of chromosomes, which, in turn, leads to an accumulation of the wrong number of genes. You’re meant to acquire two copies of each chromosome, and therefore two copies of each gene, but instead some cells acquire three copies and some only one.

When cells carry three copies of the chromosome, these are associated with the damaging protein amyloid, which occurs between nerve cells. You have amyloid plaques in your brain when your wellness is affected by Alzheimer’s. According to previous research, when you have high cholesterol levels, as defined by a reading of more than 5.8 mmol/L, you’re significantly more likely to have brain plaques than those with normal or lower cholesterol levels.

In this previous study, carried out by researchers from Japan’s Kyushu University, 86% of people with high cholesterol had brain plaques, compared with only 62 percent of people with low cholesterol levels. The researchers also used autopsies to look for tangles in the brain, which is also a known trademark sign of Alzheimer’s disease. Tangles are an accumulation of a protein called tau, which occurs inside nerve cells, but the researchers found no link between high cholesterol and the tangles that develop in the brain with Alzheimer’s disease. Still, there was a definite link with plaques.

Heart Health Meets Mental Health: The Damage of Cholesterol

Categories: Alzheimer's Disease, Brain, brain plaques, cells, cholesterol, cholesterol levels, high cholesterol, Mental Health, nerve cells, Research

Everything You Need to Know About Angina

When your heart muscles are not getting enough oxygen, your wellbeing can be affected by angina. When this happens, it means a big concern for your heart health as angina is a sign of heart disease. One in 10 of those whose wellness is affected by angina will go on to have a heart attack within a year of diagnosis.

Your coronary arteries deliver oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle, and so when these narrow or start becoming blocked, angina and heart disease can occur. If these arteries become fully blocked, your muscles of your heart can’t gain access to the blood supply, and this is what causes a heart attack. Angina may be an occasional problem or may rapidly worsen until a heart attack occurs.

Pain in the chest is the main symptom of angina, although you can also feel short of breath, anxious or nauseous. The pain usually begins as a vague discomfort or ache in the centre of your chest, but it varies and may be described as tightness, burning, crushing, pressure or heaviness. You may experience a choking sensation, or find that the pain radiates or moves to your neck, shoulder, jaw or down into your left arm. However, this pain usually only lasts a few minutes and responds to treatment quickly.

Angina can be caused by atherosclerosis, high cholesterol (especially if you have an inherited tendency to high cholesterol or a strong family history of heart disease), cigarette smoking, diabetes mellitus and high blood pressure. Angina can also occur due to other conditions in which your blood supply cannot get to your heart muscle. These include abnormal heart rhythms, heart valve disease, structural abnormalities of your coronary arteries and severe anaemia. Other factors can make angina worse, such as obesity, fever, infection and serious illness, emotional stress, an overactive thyroid gland and sudden extreme exertion.

Lifestyle changes are a major part of angina treatment, as weight loss, exercise, quitting smoking and a healthy diet can help manage your risk factors. You can also take a drug called glyceryl trinitrate or GTN which comes in spray form, or as a tablet you put under your tongue. If you’re worried you may be at risk of angina, or coronary heart disease, contact your doctor as soon as possible.

Everything You Need to Know About Angina

Categories: angina, blood supply, Causes, coronary arteries, heart, Heart Attack, heart disease, heart muscle, high cholesterol, Symptoms

Are "Healthy" Foods Making Your Cholesterol Higher?

Old wives’ tales about our health tend to be passed down from generation to generation. Some are based on truth, others aren’t, such as walking in bare feet leads to colds. Although these kinds of myths can be rooted in the past, modern-day wives’ tales are being created all the time, so how do we separate fact from fiction when it comes to lowering cholesterol?

Medication Vs Natural Remedies

Controlling our high cholesterol is possible with medication, but there appears to be lots of evidence saying we can also use specific foods and supplements to improve our wellness. Cholesterol is a waxy substance that makes lots of different processes in our body possible, such as sending messages along nerve fibres. We can get lots of it from our diet, with some foods increasing good cholesterol (HDL) and other ingredients raising our bad cholesterol, putting our wellbeing in jeopardy. Taking all this into account it seems to make perfect sense that certain foods can be used as natural ways to keep our cholesterol at healthy levels.

Do they work?

Garlic has a long history of being used for medicinal purposes and research has shown that it can lower our LDL readings. But on closer examination by health publications, the effect was found to be temporary, meaning we may not benefit over the longer term. Fenugreek is a seed that’s also gained a reputation as an ingredient that could have an impact on our cholesterol, with tests reporting a 38 per cent drop in LDL levels. Although these experiments have attracted criticism for being low in quality, the results have motivated experts to call for more scientific studies into the foodstuffs. Fish oil can seem to do no wrong when it comes to our health. It has been found to lower triglycerides in the bloodstream, which are connected with heart disease. This sounds promising but tests have also showed that fish oil is associated with small increases in our LDL cholesterol, showing how important it is to get medical advice about eating to lower our cholesterol levels.

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Are "Healthy" Foods Making Your Cholesterol Higher?

Categories: high cholesterol, lowering cholesterol, Supplements