Lifestyle Changes To Improve Your Cholesterol
Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance in your body. Your body uses it to protect nerves, make cell tissues, and produce certain hormones. Your liver makes all the cholesterol your body needs. But you also get cholesterol directly from food you eat. Common sources include eggs, meats, and dairy products. This can add too much cholesterol into your body. If this happens, you may have high cholesterol. That can have negative effects on your health. Luckily, there are lifestyle changes you can make to improve your cholesterol.
Are There Any Treatments For High Cholesterol Levels Caused By Genetics
Usually, the first line of treatment for high cholesterol is lifestyle modification, but if you have FH youll need more advanced treatment. Its always important to eat a low-fat diet, exercise and control your weight. Having a healthy lifestyle is crucial for heart health and for overall health, says Martin. However, people with FH could eat an extremely low-fat diet and still not be able to control their cholesterol because theyre genetically unable to handle it. For them, cholesterol is going to build up in the bloodstream regardless of what they eat.
Fortunately, there are medications that can substantially lower LDL cholesterol levels. The most common treatment for FH is statin drug therapy. Statin drugs work by blocking an enzyme that produces cholesterol in the liver and increases your bodys ability to remove cholesterol from the blood. They can lower your LDL cholesterol levels by 50 percent or more. Statins have been safely used to reduce the risk of heart disease for 30 years and continue to be the number one option when it comes to helping people with FH.
Other treatment options include medications that block cholesterol from being absorbed from your intestines into your bloodstream, or drugs that block an enzyme called PCSK9, which reduces the amount of LDL cholesterol in your blood.
Natural Ways To Reduce Bad Cholesterol
Cholesterol is a chemical found in all animals. Its important for various functions in cell membranes and also in production of bile acids, vitamin D, and some hormones. Low to average levels of cholesterol in the blood are perfectly healthy for a human.
However, high levels in the blood are associated with arterial damage, cardiovascular disease, and an increased chance of heart attacks. The fight against cholesterol has been going on for years.
The US has had some success in getting high cholesterol under control, mostly with drugs called statins. These have been shown to be relatively effective in keeping people with high cholesterol from getting worse but come with a list of negative effects.
In the last few years, many people have taken to alternative methods of controlling or lowering their cholesterol. There are many ways to naturally lower cholesterol without taking any man-made medicine. Many people are skeptical about these drugs and their impact on other parts of the body. Each person is different, and if you are in need of reducing or maintaining your cholesterol, you might as well try every option, right?
Here are six natural ways you can lower your cholesterol without having to buy medicine. As with all health choices, make sure you consult with your doctor first!
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Reduce Stress In Your Daily Life
Although stress is important in helping us escape from bad situations, persistent stress could lead to heart disease. Recent research is indicating that recurrent stress could also have an effect on your cholesterol levels. Learning how to cope with stress in your life could help keep your cholesterol levels in check and your heart healthy.
Triglycerides A Different Type Of Lipid
Triglycerides are another type of lipid. Theyre different from cholesterol. While your body uses cholesterol to build cells and certain hormones, it uses triglycerides as a source of energy.
When you eat more calories than your body can use right away, it converts those calories into triglycerides. It stores triglycerides in your fat cells. It also uses lipoproteins to circulate triglycerides through your bloodstream.
If you regularly eat more calories than your body can use, your triglyceride levels can get high. This may raise your risk of several health problems, including heart disease and stroke.
Your doctor can use a simple blood test to measure your triglyceride level, as well as your cholesterol levels. Learn how to get your triglyceride level tested.
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Fish Oil Supplements With Omega
Omega-3 fatty acids are also found in fish and fish oils. Salmon, tuna, lake trout, herring, sardines, and other fatty fish are especially rich sources.
Experts have long believed that omega-3 fatty acids in fish help reduce the risk of getting heart disease. Other nutrients in fish, or a combination of those nutrients and omega-3 fatty acids, may help protect your heart. Eating one or two servings of fatty fish a week may lower your chances of having a heart attack.
If you have heart disease, you may also benefit from taking omega-3 fatty acid supplements or eating other foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids. For example, walnuts, canola oil, and soybeans are good sources. Evidence is stronger for the benefits of eating fish with omega-3 fatty acids than taking supplements or eating other foods.
An Introduction To Cholesterol
Cholesterol is a type of fat found in the bloodstream and the cell membranes of all body tissues. The majority of cholesterol is made by the liver from saturated fats in our diet. Cholesterol is rarely found in food, except in eggs, liver and kidneys.
Cholesterol is used in various ways throughout the body, including to:
- Make hormones
- Aid brain and nerve function
- Synthesise vitamin D.
It is also converted by the liver into bile acids, which help us digest food.
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Work With Your Doctor On A Lower Cholesterol Plan
Lowering your cholesterol doesnt mean going it alone. Your primary care doctor is a helpful partner along your journey.
Your doctor can work with you to create an action plan just for you one that combines diet, exercise and other lifestyle changes to help you lower and manage your cholesterol.
For example, losing weight and quitting smoking can be big helpers for lowering cholesterol. Quitting smoking can raise your good HDL cholesterol levels, and losing weight can lower your bad LDL cholesterol levels significantly.
But these two tasks arent easy. Fortunately, your primary care doctor can be a great resource to help you get started and find practical ways to stick with it. Plus, help with quitting smoking and losing weight may already be covered if you have health insurance.
Whether you want to quit smoking, lose weight or just learn more about how your personal health would benefit from lower cholesterol levels, regular check-ins with your doctor are key. They can also perform cholesterol tests the only way to actually measure cholesterol to check your progress and help you make adjustments based on the results.
What Is The Treatment For High Cholesterol
Treatment for high cholesterol begins with lifestyle changes. Sometimes cholesterol-lowering medicine is also needed. The most common medicines used to reduce cholesterol levels are called statins.
In people with HIV, treatment for high cholesterol may include changing an HIV treatment regimen to avoid taking HIV medicines that can increase cholesterol levels.
Some HIV medicines can interact with medicines that lower cholesterol levels. Health care providers carefully consider potential drug-drug interactions between HIV medicines and any other medicines a person may be taking.
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Work In Some More Movement To Your Daily Tasks
Do you need to start running every day? Do you need to join a gym or buy a bunch of home fitness equipment? If you want to, go ahead! But there are many other choices, and finding a routine that works for you is whats most important.
Ideally, you want to aim for at least 2.5 hours of moderate physical activity every week. You can break that up however you like. You might focus on doing something every day, or you could dedicate yourself to just a few days per week. The key is to just get started.
For example, do you usually take the elevator? Take the stairs instead. Do you walk your dog every day? Go a little farther than usual, or walk at a faster pace. Need to go shopping? Park farther away than you normally do. Catching up on your favorite TV series? Try stretching, dumbbells or kettlebells while youre watching rather than just sitting on the couch. Also look for chances to bring motion into your daily life, such as walking while you talk on the phone.
If youre feeling good, work up to more intense physical activity, like lap swimming, jogging or hot yoga. Dont overexert yourself, but remember that regular and consistent exercise has benefits beyond managing your cholesterol. It also helps reduce blood pressure and builds your overall physical, mental and emotional well-being.
Even if you just go a little farther or a little faster than you usually do, that extra activity will be a big step in the right direction for your health.
How To Deal With High Cholesterol Levels Best Exercises To Do
To deal with such issues, the doctors mostly advise you to follow a proper and healthy lifestyle. This will help you to keep your body in a healthy state. Your food should contain all the essential vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins to let your body become stronger and build a specific level of immunity. Apart from this, if your body lacks some amount of nutrients, they can be taken in the form of supplements as per the doctors prescription.
- Being one of the fatty substances, the cholesterol compounds have the tendency to circulate in our blood for longer durations. In case you consume food items that contain high amounts of cholesterol, they can get stuck to the walls of your arteries.
- As they begin to stick in large amounts, it leads to the narrowing of blood vessels and increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
- Further, cholesterol is not the only element that can affect the blood vessels. The type of proteins that carry them also has a big role to play. The low-density lipoprotein or LDL has more tendency to cause health problems as compared to high-density lipoprotein HDL cholesterol.
- The LDL carries the cholesterol through the entire body while HDL aims at protecting the body from unnecessary cholesterol buildup.
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Lack Of Physical Activity
Certainly related to the above, insufficient physical activity can also drive LDL higher. The good news, however, is that even modest increases in the amount of exercise you get can help a great deal. Ideally, doctors may want you getting up to 90 minutes a day of physical activity however, even 30 to 45 minutes regularly can be helpful.
At bare minimum, the surgeon general recommends that adults get 2.5 hours of moderate exercise every week. This can include:
- Biking
- Swimming
How Do Exercises Help In Lowering High Cholesterol Levels 6 Exercises For Women With High Cholesterol
It is extremely important in todays time to keep a check on your health and stay healthy and fit. Every age group undergoes some health issues and has its own ways of dealing with them. For women, a lot of issues have appeared nowadays.
Most of the women deal with their increasing weights, high blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. If the levels of cholesterol start increasing in the body, it can lead to causing a significant effect on the major body organs like the heart, kidneys, etc.
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Recent Guidelines For Normal Cholesterol Levels
Your body needs some cholesterol to function properly, including some LDL. But if your LDL levels are too high, it can raise your risk of serious health problems.
In 2013, the American College of Cardiologists and the American Heart Association developed new guidelines for the treatment of high cholesterol.
Before this change, doctors would manage cholesterol based on numbers in a cholesterol levels chart. Your doctor would measure your total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and LDL cholesterol levels. They would then decide whether to prescribe a cholesterol-lowering medication based on how your numbers compared to the numbers in the chart.
Under the new guidelines, in addition to your cholesterol levels, treatment recommendations consider other risk factors for heart disease. These risk factors include diabetes and the estimated 10-year risk for a cardiac event such as a heart attack or stroke. So what your normal cholesterol levels are depends on whether you have other risk factors for heart disease.
These new guidelines recommend that if you dont have risk factors for heart disease, your doctor should prescribe treatment if your LDL is greater than 189 mg/dL. To find out what your personal cholesterol recommendations are, talk to your doctor.
With the changes mentioned above in the treatment guidelines for high cholesterol, cholesterol charts are no longer considered the best way for doctors to gauge the management of cholesterol levels in adults.
| Total cholesterol |
Reduce Portion Size To Lower Cholesterol
Controlling your weight is an important part of getting to healthy cholesterol levels, so its crucial to know your portion sizes if you’re trying to lower cholesterol. A portion of starchy carbohydrate, like potato or pasta, should be only about half the size of a baseball. A heart-healthy portion of meat should be about the size of a deck of playing cards, or about three ounces.
Restaurants commonly serve more food that you need, so consider splitting an entrée. Cooking at home will give you more control over your portion sizes, as well as what goes into each dish. You can learn more ways to enjoy smaller portions at the USDA’s Choose My Plate site.
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Lowering Cholesterol Naturally Why Its So Difficult For People With Fh
Lifestyle changes such as exercising and eating a healthy diet are the first line of defense against high cholesterol. Unfortunately for people with the genetic disorder Familial Hypercholesterolemia , lowering cholesterol naturally is not enough. Medical treatment and medication, or a combination of medications, are necessary to manage the dangerously high cholesterol levels that put these patients at risk for early and aggressive heart disease.
Cholesterol and the Body
Our bodies have a complicated relationship with cholesterol. Cholesterol does important work, including helping to develop the membranes of cells, composing bile, which digests food in the intestines, and allowing the body to make Vitamin D and vital hormones, including estrogen and testosterone . In fact, cholesterol is so important that much of the cholesterol in our blood doesnt come from the food we eat it is produced by cells in the body. The liver is responsible for synthesizing and removing cholesterol, making it central to cholesterol level regulation.
The Challenge of FH
For people who dont have FH, high cholesterol is often the result of unhealthy lifestyle choices. Lowering cholesterol naturally by eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, not smoking and limiting exposure to secondhand smoke is often the only treatment they need.
When Lowering Cholesterol Naturally Isnt Enough
What Causes High Cholesterol
Your liver produces cholesterol, but you also get cholesterol from food. Eating too many foods that are high in fat can increase your cholesterol level.
Being overweight and inactive also causes high cholesterol. If you are overweight, you most likely have a higher level of triglycerides. If you never exercise and arent active in general, it can lower your HDL .
You family history also affects your cholesterol level. Research has shown that high cholesterol tends to run in families. If you have an immediate family member who has it, you could have it, too.
Smoking also causes high cholesterol. It lowers your HDL .
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Dealing With High Cholesterol Levels
With changes in lifestyle and diets, high bad cholesterol levels are becoming more and more common. LDL cholesterol gathers in the arteries, and increases the risk of a heart attack. Because of this, leading a healthy lifestyle, and managing and monitoring medication is now more important than ever.
There are numerous ways in which to keep your bad cholesterol levels down, including using lipid lowering medications, eating well, and exercise.
Eating Healthier
Eating well not only keeps you in good condition by keeping your weight healthy and keeping you energised, but eating the right foods will also increase your HDL good cholesterol levels. This good cholesterol carries the bad cholesterol away from the arteries, and takes it to the liver, where it is secreted as bile, or converted to bile salt. This decreases the risk of heart attack or stroke.
Foods to eat to bring up good levels of cholesterol include beans and legumes, olive oil, fatty fish, and nuts.
Being More Active
Although a change in diet decreases bad cholesterol levels greatly, it can sometimes not be enough by itself. Therefore regular exercise, and taking the correct medication is recommended.
Smoking
If you smoke, quitting will also decrease the levels of bad cholesterol. Smoking lowers the good cholesterol in your body, and damages your arteries, meaning the risk of build up linked to cholesterol related ill health is increased.
Medication
What Is The Difference Between Good Cholesterol And Bad Cholesterol
Good cholesterol is known as high-density lipoprotein . It removes cholesterol from the bloodstream. Low-density lipoprotein is the bad cholesterol.
If your total cholesterol level is high because of a high LDL level, you may be at higher risk of heart disease or stroke. But, if your total cholesterol level is high only because of a high HDL level, youre probably not at higher risk.
Triglycerides are another type of fat in your blood. When you eat more calories than your body can use, it turns the extra calories into triglycerides.
Changing your lifestyle can improve your cholesterol levels, lower LDL and triglycerides, and raise HDL.
Your ideal cholesterol level will depend on your risk for heart disease.
- Total cholesterol level less than 200 is best, but it depends on your HDL and LDL levels.
- LDL cholesterol levels less than 130 is best, but this depends on your risk for heart disease.
- HDL cholesterol levels 60 or higher reduces your risk for heart disease.
- Triglycerides less than 150 milligrams per deciliter is best.
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