Dig It with Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball - 99: Cholesterol, Menopause & Heart Health: What Every Woman Should Know

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

This special bonus episode of Dig It is brought to you by Benecol, the food lowering cholesterol brand.This week, Jo and Zoe are joined by registered Dietitian and Dietetic Adviser at HEART UK, Lynne Garton, for an honest and informative conversation about heart health, cholesterol, menopause and the small lifestyle changes that can make a real difference.Why does cholesterol matter? Why are women in midlife particularly affected? And why do so many people have high cholesterol without even realising it?Jo also opens up about Disco Steve’s cholesterol diagnosis, family eating habits growing up, and the surprisingly healthy contents of her “big soup meal”.Benecol is all about “life that keeps on moving” and they’re giving one lucky winner £2,000 towards a holiday of their choice.To enter: Follow Benecol UK on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/benecoluk/  Head to their pinned competition post Comment with the song that helps you “set your beat for a better day” For full terms and conditions, head to the Benecol website - https://benecol.co.uk/Plant stanol ester has been shown to lower cholesterol. High cholesterol is a risk factor in the development of coronary heart disease. The beneficial effect has been shown with a daily intake of 1.5-3.0g plant stanols, as part, of a healthy diet and lifestyle.

Coming up on Diggett. When it comes to cholesterol and the menopause, hormones play a role. So before the menopause, estrogen is generally protected of cholesterol and of the heart and the blood vessels. Joe, I've heard about your big soup meal. Oh no! Crazy concoction. By the time something like a heart attack has happened, that is 20, 30, 40 years in the making. Which is why it's so important.

to keep your cholesterol lower for longer. We'd have toast and we'd have lardle dripping and we'd put it on toast and then we put salt on top as well and it tasted absolutely delicious. Is that something you would advise, Lynne? No. All of that right after this. This special bonus episode of Digit

is brought to you by Benacol, the UK's number one cholesterol lowering food brand. Today we're talking about something that affects so many of us, often without us even realising and that is heart health and colour cholesterol, particularly for women in midlife. We're joined by Lynn Garten, a registered dietitian and dietetic advisor at Heart UK, the cholesterol charity, to help us understand a bit more about

heart health and what we can actually do about it. Lynn, hi. Welcome to Digit. How are you? It's been a while. We've worked together before and you are such a font of knowledge. And I'm really happy that you're here to talk to everybody else all about heart health. Are you good? I'm very well. Thank you, Joanne. Thank you for inviting me on to the podcast. I love it. I love your podcast. Oh, thank you. Well, it's very important what we're about to talk about, isn't it, Zoe? Yeah, it is. So, Lynn, when we talk about heart health and cholesterol, we hear people talk about cholesterol all the time. And I'm like, what is cholesterol? What are we actually talking about? And why should we all be paying attention to it? That's a great question,

though, because there is a lot of complexities out there when it comes to cholesterol. So cholesterol is a type of fat. We need it. It's essential for life. It's needed to make healthy cells, needed to make certain hormones, vitamins, and something called bile, which helps us digest fat in the gut. The problem is, is when we have too much cholesterol in the blood, because what happens then is that cholesterol can get carried to the walls of the artery to form something called a plaque. Now, over time, that fat builds up, which could eventually result in narrowing of the arteries and potentially also for blocking it completely. Now, dependent on where that process happens, it can result in something like a heart attack if it's the arteries around the heart, a stroke if it's the arteries going

to the brain. And it's also been implicated in vascular dementia as well. But here's the thing. It doesn't happen overnight. This takes decades to happen. And so by the time something like a heart attack has happened, that is 20, 30, 40 years in the making, which is why it's so important to keep your cholesterol lower for longer, because it builds up silently, gradually. You can't feel cholesterol. Typically, there's no symptoms. So that's why it's so important to get a cholesterol test and know your number. I think it's the kind of thing that people think it happens to other people. I'm too young. I'm quite healthy.

It's never going to affect me. And then when they get the cholesterol test, it's quite a wake-up call. It's quite a shock. And we've talked a lot on this podcast about midlife and menopause. So I'm wondering whether that actually affects cholesterol. Is it something that's really, really common? Or are they not related at all then? Can you clear this up for us?

Certainly. Yeah. When it comes to cholesterol and the menopause, hormones play a role. So before the menopause, estrogen is generally protective of cholesterol and of the heart and the blood vessels. However, during the menopause, when estrogen drops, cholesterol goes up. Now, in order to sort of get a better picture of what's going on, it might be helpful to give a bit more detail. So cholesterol, as I say, is a type of fat. It can't be carried around in the blood on its own.

If you think of when you pour oil onto water, it doesn't mix. So it gets bundled into something called a lipoprotein. I know this is very technical and you have to excuse me with the biology. It's interesting. Yeah, but I think it is important because what happens is these lipoproteins help transport the cholesterol around the body. Think of them as taxis. They're carrying that cholesterol around in the blood. Now, you may, if you've had a test or you may have come across something called LDL cholesterol.

Now that's the cholesterol that is carried around by the low-density lipoprotein, and it often gets referred to as being bad, because it's that where that's the lipoprotein that can get the cholesterol into the walls of the artery. And then there's another lipoprotein called HDL. An HDL cholesterol is the cholesterol that is carried around by HDL. And if you imagine it as this sort of vehicle, as this taxi, the HDL is often considered good because it carries cholesterol away from the arteries

back to the liver where it gets removed or recycled. So here's a thing that happens during the menopause. LDL cholesterol can go up, which is a bad thing, but HDL cholesterol can also go up. Now, as I say, typically you think, well, HDL cholesterol, it's good, that's a good thing, right? But here's the nuance. as cholesterol, HDL cholesterol gets too high, it can lose its protective properties. So having too much HDL cholesterol is not necessarily a good thing. Using that analogy of the taxi, if the taxi's broken down, then it doesn't matter how much

cholesterol's being carried around by it. It's not working. It's not doing its job. So if you get your results and a woman has got her results and thinks, oh, well, I've got a great HDL cholesterol, I don't need to worry about my LDL. No, that's not the case. The focus is always the LDL cholesterol. What happened with me and our situation, our family situation? Cholesterol has never really been on my agenda. I've never really thought about it before. It's not something that's happened in my family. However, Steve has been affected by it.

So his dad has got very high cholesterol as his mum has as well. So he got tested. And Steve, he runs, he plays paddle now, obviously doesn't everybody. He does loads and loads of fitness. And it was just, I just assumed that he would be absolutely fine. But actually, his levels were really, really high. I think he was seven or above or whatever. And so he went to the doctor. He had lots of conversations about starting statins and about maybe this was his future. This was the way he had to be.

And it was a real wake-up call just to look about what he ate, how he lived, what he actually did. So it was something that I suddenly became incredibly aware of. But, you know, just knowing that his cholesterol was super, super high. Is that something that often happens as well, that people are shocked when they get their own tests? Absolutely, because you can't necessarily, as I say, see or feel high cholesterol. So you might look healthy on the outside, but you can have high cholesterol. And that's because genetics plays a role as well. So if you've got a family history of high cholesterol or early heart disease,

then you may have inherited the tendency to, or the genetics to have high-raised cholesterol. And as I say, there are other factors as well which impact cholesterol. So as we get older, cholesterol can go up. So this is why it's important to really know your number sort of as young as possible, well, as young as possible, sort of in your early adulthood, so that you can take action. Because the reason why I say that is that there are other risk factors for heart disease. For example, age, if you've got diabetes, if you smoke, your blood pressure.

and that if you've got those other risks, that can actually mean you need your cholesterol to go even lower. But for general healthy people with no other risk factors, total cholesterol should be less than five. But as I say, that doesn't give us a full picture of everything. LDL cholesterol less than three. HDL cholesterol for a woman above 1.2. and then there are something else called non-HDL cholesterol, which actually you may see in your results as well. That's all the other lipoproteins apart from HDL.

And those are also harmful. So we aim for those to be below 4 millimoles per litre. Okay, Lynne, so if someone's listening to this, and this includes me, and I've got no idea what my cholesterol is, what should I and anyone else listening do about it? Well, the first thing is to get a cholesterol test. Yeah. Know your number.

The second thing would be to ask for the full breakdown because the total cholesterol on its own is not going to give you a full picture. Now, for anybody in the UK, age between 40 and 74, if they've got no other sort of health conditions, they can get a free NHS health check. And you'll get your cholesterol tested as part of that health check. And then the third step is to ask to be able to be able to. put it into context for you for your own personal risk because it's, as I say, there are other risk factors and that will determine what your cholesterol target should be. But as I mentioned, age is something that does impact cholesterol. So if you're younger, your overall risk might be low at that stage, but you still might have raised LDL cholesterol. And so don't wait. You can

take action. There are steps that you can take to bring it down. So, because we, unfortunately, we can't do anything about getting older. And so risk will just increase over the years. So that would be the message is don't wait, you can do something about it. Okay. I've actually, my uncle also had a minor heart attack. And it's scared him to death, of course. And he lost family members as well.

So it was a familiar thing for him. And he took it very, very seriously. And he changed his diet radically. And it has had a major effect. It really has. It's brought down his cholesterol level. So he's now living without so much fear and he's just so much more aware about what he should be eating, what he should not be eating and managing his diet. So that has been a really key factor. Benicol, I swear to God, has been really instrumental in helping because there are, you know, the little yoghups that you can have. One of those a day is really good, switching from having butter or margarine or whatever it is to having one of the low fat spreads that Benico do or low cholesterol spreads that Benico do. He just embraced all of that. And he, he just embraced all of that. And he, through himself and it's been really, really helpful. And the same for Steve. I mean, he's still a bit

partial with fruit, fruit toast in the mornings. And I look at him and I go, he should you be really? And he's like, yeah, it's fine, it's fine. But then he'll be having the drinks as well, which have helped. When you find out your cholesterol, and if it is high and those levels are, you know, not the ideal level, Lynn, what can we actually be doing? Well, diet and lifestyle play a really important role. But it doesn't mean to say that you have to completely overhaul your diet and lifestyle. It's about making small changes to what you're doing on a day-to-day basis because then you're more likely to make them habits. So if we take physical activity, for example, being more physically active is beneficial. But it doesn't necessarily mean going to the gym.

It's doing things called non-exercise activity. So, you know, getting up and doing a walk going out at lunchtime for a while. walk or gardening or dancing around the kitchen, all of those things where you're generally more active in the day to day. So that's physical activity and when it comes to diet, it's a good starting point is to really look at the type of fats you're eating. So trying to cut down on the amount of saturated fat. Now that's fat found in fatty processed meat, full fat dairy products, butter, lard, cakes, chocolates, high fat takeaways, high fat ready meals. That's the type of fat we should be cutting down on.

But at the same time, shift into a healthier balance of fat. So those are things like vegetable oils, olive oil, rapeseed oil, the spreads made from those oils, as well as nuts and seeds, oily fish, avocados, olives. And the other thing is to eat more fibre because as a nation, we just aren't eating enough fibre in our diet. And that's found in things like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, pulses, beans, chickpeas, lentils, oats and barley.

All of those have also been shown to lower cholesterol. But it's not about thinking of it being restrictive. It shouldn't be. We all enjoy food, right? We enjoy our meals. So it's looking about making simple swaps and possible additions to the diet as well. And I thought, Joe, I've heard about your big soup meal. Oh, no.

It's a crazy concoction. I thought we could have a look at that just to see how it could potentially be upgraded. So you've got your soup, your vegetable soup. Great. It's a portion of vegetables. If you wanted to add more vegetables to it, maybe some frozen peas, sweet corn. Oh, I do sweet corn. Okay.

So you've got your vegetables. you've then got your cottage cheese. So cottage cheese, great source of protein, fantastic. Then the hummus is the source of healthy fats. So you've got your healthy fats there. Then the rice. The rice, I would suggest, is either going, instead of white rice, maybe looking at brown, or if you didn't like that, getting a sachet of grains.

Because those grains often contain barley. And barley has been shown to lower cholesterol. It contains a type of fibre that lowers cholesterol. So it's making those small tweaks. I don't know how you feel about that, Joe. Is that something you could do? To be honest, it's a very adaptable meal. I'll be honest with you.

So sometimes, I mean, you know, those microwavable bags of grains that you can get can be very, very handy when I haven't got very much time. And you can get such a wide range of grains and rice there. So I do quite often have wild rice, no, whole wheat rice and wild rice combined. Sometimes I have grains, quinoa, all that kind of stuff. So it's just a base. I take that on board. I always do add sweet corn. I just didn't want to complicate things when I was explaining to Zoe because she might be.

There were already too many layers, Lynn. It was quite my head nearly exploded. But it was delicious. I was holding back. I really was holding back. But also I put loads of seeds and nuts on top as well because I really like the crunch. I'm always about textures when I'm eating food. So the rest of it might be slop, but then you do have a bit of crunch from the sweet corn

and then the nuts that I put on top as well. Brilliant. And that goes to show that actually, you know, you're still enjoying the food and you're still, you're getting those healthy fats in, you're getting the whole grains in, the brown rice. And it is those types of simple swaps. So maybe if you have a packet of crisps, a snack, look for a handful of nuts. Adding more vegetables into your main meal or swapping half your meat with pulses, beans, lentils, chickpeas. And it's about making those small, sustainable changes. Because those, those. Those are likely to, you'll be able to keep up with those, and they become habits, which is really important then for the long-term health. So I found something at the back of the fridge. You know, sometimes things lurk and you're like, oh, I haven't looked in that pot. What on earth is that? And I pulled out the pot. And it was left over.

I think it might have been for Christmas. And it was a bowl, and it was fat. And so obviously some member of my family had poured the chicken fat from, or the turkey fat, put it into a bowl and just left it there. So what had happened? You have the layer of the fat on top and then you have the jelly underneath. and I bought it out and the kids were like, what the hell is that? And I went, oh, well, do you know what? When I was young, when I was like 14, I used to say my grandparents all the time,

this was a Sunday night treat. We'd have toast and we'd have lard or dripping and we'd put it on toast and then we'd put salt on top as well and it tasted absolutely delicious because you've got the flavour of the chicken or the beef, whatever. It could be beef dripping too. And yeah, with the layer of salt, it was just amazing. Is that something you would advise, Lynn, to have dripping on toast these days? Is that? No. Not if you've got high cholesterol. I guess it's a hangover from the war, maybe. I don't know. It was just, it was just what we ate. It was just part of our diet. Terrible. Terrible. If we talk about the Benicol products, Lynn, we know it's proven to lower cholesterol, but how does it actually work? Well, so Benicol contains something called plant stanols. Now, plant stanols are found in nature. They're found in vegetable oils, whole grains, nutsies, but they're not in high enough amounts to lower cholesterol. So these

products have been produced to have enough of these active ingredients to lower cholesterol. And if you take them regularly and in the right dose, they can lower cholesterol by about 7 to 10 percent. And that's because they block cholesterol being absorbed in the gut. So if there's less cholesterol coming into the body, the liver has to sort of draw the cholesterol from the blood back into the liver. So that's how your cholesterol in the blood gets lowered. That's so clever. That's so clever. Because I often see them on the shelf and I think, because that's that thing. I just think, oh, I don't have to worry about cholesterol.

To me, it feels like something that, you know, like my dad will worry about. And I'm thinking, oh, I do need to check out my own cholesterol and start thinking about these things. And Joe, you find it quite easy to build into your day, don't you? Oh, it's super easy. I mean, I love yoghuts and I love yogurt drinks. So they are just in the fridge there to grab whenever I'm, if I'm really peckish, just for them going out to work or something, just one of those, the drinks is amazing. Yoguts I really like. And again, I always put seed, nuts and fruit on top of the yogurt. And just changing your spread over. I mean, you know, sometimes

I'll have butter, but then other times I'll have the olive spread from Benicol. And it's really easy. It really works. And if it's going to do something positive, then I'm all for it. I've met quite a few people just, you know, having worked with Lynn in the past, quite a few young women who did their test, their cholesterol tests, and they had a real shock result. And women who were at risk of heart disease and have had to make radical changes to their diets and their lifestyle. But to look at them, you think they were absolutely fine, but nobody wants to walk around and be a ticking time bomb at a risk of having a heart attack.

Thank goodness we've had this conversation. This is good. It's kind of alerted me. I'm like, I'm going to book my test quick. It's about that awareness, isn't it? It's not supposed to be, I don't want it to come across as fear mongering. It's about just knowing your number. So you can take action.

You can do something about it. And Joe, what you were saying about the women, I mean, it is common. I mean, I think between the ages of 45 and 54, over two thirds of women have high cholesterol. Wow. Between the ages of 55 and 64, that's over three quarters of women have high cholesterol.

But if you don't know, if you don't know, you don't know, you can't take any action. So it is, it is, it's about raising that awareness and then making those sustainable changes, making those small gradual changes which will bring big benefits in the long run. Lynn, you're a superstar. Thank you very much indeed for talking to us. And hopefully people listening now will do that.

How do they get the check? Call your doctor surgery? Can you send off for these things to get your cholesterol checked? You are entitled to a free NHS health check. Now, it's not necessarily done in your GP surgery. It might be done at pharmacies. It may be done in other types of centres. But if you look online, NHS health checks in your area,

you'll be able to find out where to get one done. Lynn, thank you so much for highlighting all of this. I'm going to go and get mine sorted. By the way, Lynne, fabulous glasses. Thank you so much to Lingarten, registered dietitian and dietetic advisor at Heart UK for joining us. Benicol is all about life that keeps on moving. And to help you find your flow, they're giving one lucky winner £2,000 towards a holiday of their choice. To enter, Benicol wants to know what's the one song that gets you in the mood to start your day. essentially what helps you set your beat for a better day. Zoe, what would you pick? What would you go for?

I'd go for the new radicals. You get what you give. I love that song. I've got the dreamers disease. I'll sing all the lyrics in the wrong order. But it is just one of those songs that every time it comes on, I just leap up and have a little dance. Such a positive message.

Really positive. I would go for, there's a band called the 5, 6, 7, 8th. I don't know if you remember this, and it's simply called Woohoo. And it's just like, oh, whoo, woo, who, who, yeah, exactly. So hit play on that and I'm out of bed. And I'm there, I'm putting the kettle on, I'm getting my toast, I'm there for the day. So that would be mine. Woohoo by the 5, six, seven, eight.

Excellent choice. To be in with a chance of winning all you have to do is follow Benicol, UK, on Instagram. Head to their pinned competition post and comment with the name of the song that sets your beat for a better day. terms and conditions, head to the Ben-a-Call website. Details of how to enter are in the show notes and we'll be on our substack too. And thanks again to Ben-a-Cole for sponsoring this special bonus episode of Dig It. Bye, Zoe. Bye, Joe.