When fighting against high cholesterol you can do one of two things to change it. First you could take prescribed medications. They have advantages of lowering your cholesterol fast and efficiently, but it comes with a price. For many people the side-effects from the medications take a huge toll on there over all health.

I advise that only in extreme cases should you result to taking medications to lower your cholesterol. I stress that everyone with high cholesterol needs to change there day to day diet. This is a huge factor and it can have wonderful results for your body.

Now it is always easier said than done when talking about changing your diet. If you are like me you can change your diet for only 1 to 2 weeks at the most before you revert to your only eating habits. So I suggest that you start changing little things in your diet at first and then take more progressive steps to change your eating life style.

So where should you start? First of all I would say start watching what you are eating. and secondly I would say start adding in some cholesterol fighting foods. There are cretin foods out their that have the ability to change your bad cholesterol and help your bodies fight to change.

I hope you are ready to know what they are because I am excited to tell you about them. Almonds and apples. On the surface, you would think they had nothing in common. But they both can contribute to a painless -- and drug-free -- lowering of your cholesterol level. So next time you are at the store, I want you to be sure to grab them both -- and here's why.

Though it is not the most popular snack on the market to day, the almond has a remarkable power of being a cholesterol lowering nut. Since ancient Greece this nut has been a popular remedy for different body symptoms. The nut was so popular in the Greek culture that it was nicknamed the Greek nut. While it is no longer call that, researchers are now beginning to call it an essential part of a heart-healthy diet.

Research has shown that it is from their high monounsaturated fat content has proven effective in lowering the LDL -- or bad cholesterol -- without destroying the good -- or HDL -- levels. Now that's the best of both worlds. It appears that about 65 percent of the total fat found in almonds is of the monounsaturated variety.

Almonds should be your new snack of choice. The only down side that you will need to look out for with this new snack is the calorie content that is found in these nuts. You will be tempted to eat them all day but it may be more calories than you need in your diet, so be careful.

One other food that you will want to start to incorporate in your diet is apples. Fruits are wonderful but most of all you will want to think of apples first. For many of us it's the definitive healthy snack. And with good reason, it turns out.

Apples have a major ability to fight against skyrocketing cholesterol levels.

The success of the apple is due to one major ingredient pectin. If you do not know what pectin is it is the sticky, soluble fiber naturally found in many fruits and veggies. Apples, contains just a little over a gram of pectin, which is just a bit more than most other fruits.

Apples have been known for quite some time to be the leading fruit in the fight against high cholesterol. One of the leading studies on this subject comes out of France. in there study they followed 30 healthy men and women for 30 days and made them eat two to three more apples daily. These people made no changes to there diets and on average 80 percent of the participants experienced a drop in there cholesterol levels. As well as there lipid levels dropped by 14 percent.

So there is no way to argue that if you really need to change your cholesterol level it is time to start implementing some new foods into your diet. Apples and almonds can be the leading factors to your new healthy life.