Discover what every woman should know about cholesterol.

Visit Deanna Carlson, R.N., BSN, on the web at St. Joseph Hospital Women’s Heart Center in Orange, CA
Deanna Carlson: We need to reduce the amount of cholesterol that we are taking in through our food products. Our body already makes a certain amount of cholesterol every single day and if you have family history probably making more or so.

So that’s why it’s so important that you know the products that you are eating and how much cholesterol is in them. You only need about 200 mg of cholesterol in your diet. So that means that when it comes to dairy products, it needs to be non-fat or a low-fat, not that you can’t have them but they need to be non-fat or low-fat, such as your yogurts, non-fat, drink skimmed milk or one percent non-fat milk.

When I saw an example of something that has high amount of cholesterol in it, is an egg yolk, not the egg white, I am only talking about the yellow, the egg yolk. There’s a 150 mg of cholesterol depending on the brand but they’re all about the same, 150 mgs in one egg yolk.

So have egg whitex or only use a little bit of that yolk when you’re putting into your omelet, make the rest of it the white or use some form of like carton eggs like egg beaters or something of that nature. I like to work with fresh foods so I would just rather use a white, just a little bit of that egg yolk.

Also staying away from foods that are very fatty like red meat. If you are going to have red meat buy the extra lean or make sure that you cut off all the visible fat. Remember that fat also has triglycerides in it. So remember, your body is making cholesterol every single day so we need to make sure that we don’t eat too much of it in our diet as well. So 200 mg are lot.

Many women do not realize that heart disease is the single greatest threat to their health. Every year, more than 500,000 American women lose their lives to heart disease — that's nearly twice as many women from all forms of cancer combined. In response to these facts, St. Joseph Hospital opened the Women's Heart Center in December 2002, the first facility in Orange County dedicated solely to the prevention, early detection and treatment of heart disease in women.