Benecol Cholesterol Awareness Day

TV favourite Gloria Hunniford describes how her husband's heart attack prompted her to focus on her own struggle with the silent killer cholesterol

When did you first discover you had high cholesterol?
When [my husband] Steven had his heart attack, two and a half years ago, it was like a warning and suddenly we were extremely conscious of our health. He was having one of his subsequent cholesterol tests and it just brought it home to me that we were at that age when we needed to start thinking about these things, so I had my cholesterol tested. I'm quite health conscious anyway, doing what I can, but my husband's scare just sharpened my focus on that 'silent killer' - your cholesterol level.

Steven and I had only been married for two and half years when he had his heart attack and he is and always was such a strong, fit healthy man; probably much more health conscious vis-a-vis diet and exercise than me. And it was a real shock when he had his heart attack. We thought it would never happen to him because he was so fit.

But then I discovered that he had lost three of his siblings in the last few years to heart-related illness, so it clearly runs in his family. But it doesn't ultimately mean that he will die of it.

Did you have any symptoms to alert you to your high cholesterol?
No. Because I was feeling more aware after Steven's heart attack I went off to the doctor's. I knew that the correct cholesterol reading was 5 or 5.2 and I was horrified to discover that mine was over 6. But then the doctor said, 'Well hang about, you can't just take a bald reading like that. You have to look at the ratio of good and bad cholesterol.'

That's why everyone has to consult a doctor to get a proper cholesterol reading and get the proper result. The question you should ask is what is the ratio of bad cholesterol to good cholesterol. Your body needs a certain amount of cholesterol.

Once you found out, did you immediately start making changes to your diet and lifestyle?Well we had already started making changes anyway, because of Steven's heart attack. At first the focus was on him and how he was doing, and it wasn't until later that I got around to thinking about it myself. So we had already started making changes to our diet, because before Steven left hospital he was given a list of instructions about what to eat and what not to eat.

One thing that really shocked me was that shellfish has very high cholesterol levels. I always thought that fish was fish and that it was all very good for you, and I didn't realise that shellfish wasn't good for you. It's the mackerel, tuna and salmon - that's what really does you good.

It was actually the heart surgeon who recommended that Steven have Benecol instead of butter. He said most people have to have fat of some sort, so make it something like Benecol, where you're taking advantage of all the properties of the plant extracts that had been proven to bring cholesterol down.

And the good thing is that Benecol don't just do butter, they do other dairy products like cream cheese, milk, yoghurt.

My adage in life is always to make things as easy for yourself as possible. I feel that if you're going to buy yoghurt, you might as well buy yoghurt that has some chance of doing you some good in terms of your cholesterol. Or milk - better to buy Benecol milk that's going to help bring your cholesterol down. These simple tricks just help to make life that bit easier. Or at least psychologically, you feel you're doing your best food-wise.