Beat cholesterol in a week

The next time you visit the chemist to buy the everyday lifestyle items few of us can live without, you will also now be able to get hold of one of the pharmaceutical industry's biggest life-saving drugs in years - and without a prescription.

Statins, which fight damaging cholesterol levels and thus protect the heart, are set to be the latest drug targeted at a growing band of under-40s who prefer to bury their head in the sand when it comes to staying healthy.

Cholesterol, in particular, seems to be the current rising concern among that age group. Only yesterday it was revealed that too many under-40s, especially women, are building up dangerous cholesterol levels by binge-eating fatty foods when depressed and consuming too many sugary drinks.

But products such as Zocor could be the pill that protects a generation. Costing around 50p a day, it's one of a group of drugs known as statins that reduce "bad" LDL cholesterol in the body by about 25 per cent after four weeks. Cholesterol is a soft waxy substance which is required by the body to keep itself healthy, but too much cholesterol circulating in the blood is a health risk.

However, drugs need not be the only answer because by adapting your lifestyle and altering your diet in the slightest of ways, you can slash your cholesterol in just a week.

There's good science behind this - even if you're a health-conscious size 10, you could have dangerously high cholesterol. Every day, your body naturally produces more bad LDL cholesterol than you could ever eat - three to four times more.

"Most of my clients still assume healthy food is low-fat," says Chiswick-based nutritionist Alli Goodbold. "But there are fats, like those found in avocados, which are essential to the human body - not least because they encourage good HDL cholesterol to transport the bad cholesterol away from the arteries and out of the body via your kidneys.''

So how can you be sure that you get the right amounts of good and bad fats?

The secret is to balance the fats

The key to lowering cholesterol is to find the right balance between fat types. If your main source of nourishment is takeaways, for instance, the ratio of fats in your blood is encouraging bad cholesterol - but not just because you're eating too much saturated fat. ln fact, your blood is more likely to be full of Omega 6 fats found in most vegetable oils, cereals and meat from animals fed on grain, and liberally used by food manufacturers in cakes, biscuits and chips. Omega 6s are polyunsaturated fats, essential to the body because they can't be made naturally by us. They are needed to make vitamins we eat work and to protect cells.

But polyunsaturates are truly beneficial only when they're balanced by enough intake of the other fat type, Omega 3s. These are found in oily fish, flaxseed (a by-product of linen), almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, rapeseed oil and soya.

It's also essential to avoid hydrogenated vegetable oils in processed foods such as ready-made meals. Also called transfats, these will undo all your good work, says Chelsea-based nutritionist Karen Turner: "These are normal vegetable oils injected with hydrogen to make them solid - the advantage for the manufacturer is that they're cheap and they prolong shelf life. But in the process, they are made virtually undigestible so remain in your arteries and plump up thighs and tummies."

One giveaway that your bad cholesterol is too high - apart from obvious factors such as increased weight and yellowing skin, particularly around the eyes - is that you get follicular keratosis, those little bumps that suddenly appear on the outside of your arms.

To find your true level it's best to take a special cholesterol test available at most chemists.

So if you think you may have high cholesterol, the good news is that you can make significant inroads on it - even in one week. Follow our seven-day plan and you could reduce your levels by up to around 50 per cent.