High cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes are diseases that are influenced by your eating habits. You may have one or all of these medical conditions at any given time. Healthy diets promote good health, help with weight loss, and steer you away from foods that will not be therapeutic in achieving a healthy lifestyle.
Diabetic Exchange Diet
If you have diabetes, you need to avoid foods that can cause high levels of glucose to appear in your blood and foods that promote obesity. The diabetic diet includes food exchanges that allow you to pick and choose what you will eat while making trade-offs. The ability to alternate foods and helpings keeps the diet interesting and tolerable. You can eat many foods on this diet as long as the exchanges equal each other, the University of Maryland Medical Center reports. For example, you can exchange certain servings of yogurt for milk on an exchange diet. You can get a diabetic exchange diet from your doctor, your nutritionist or from the American Diabetes Association.
Low-Cholesterol Diet
A low-cholesterol diet helps decrease the levels of low-density lipoproteins or the "bad" cholesterol as well as fats called triglycerides. You will get some cholesterol from this type of diet, but you can keep it lower with food such as lean meats and poultry, mostly grilled and not fried. You will eat very little butter and other foods with trans fats and saturated fats on this diet. The goal is to lessen the amount of fats you take into your body to lower the cholesterol in the blood. Your doctor may add medication to lower your cholesterol levels further. A low-cholesterol diet may include servings of fish, nuts, and high-fiber foods like oatmeal and whole-grain breads, MayoClinic.com reports.
Low-Sodium Diet
Low-sodium diets are used for several ailments, including high blood pressure. This type of diet may focus on not eating processed foods like soups or boxed dinners, most of which contain very high levels of sodium. Your should only eat table salt and foods high in salt very sparingly while on this diet. This diet encourages the inclusion of fresh fruits and vegetables in your diet, MayoClinic.com reports. A low-sodium diet plan can be obtained from your local dietitian or doctor.
DASH Diet
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute recommends the DASH -- dietary approaches to stop hypertension -- is a diet for people with high blood pressure. On this particular diet, you will eat low-cholesterol and low-fat foods, the same as with many other diets. You may eat poultry, fish, vegetables, fruits and whole grains.
