Cholesterol Control: Tips To Preventing High Cholesterol Levels

Unless you get a blood test that includes your lipid profile you won’t know if you have high cholesterol levels. You can have a variety of complications if you don’t have your cholesterol levels checked including heart disease which can possibly lead to death. The most important way that you can first against high cholesterol levels and heart disease is to prevent them. You can do this by taking a look at your lifestyle and making changes to keep a healthy heart.

Watch Your Weight

Not only does weight gain run the risk of you not fitting into your jeans, but it can also raise your LDL or bad cholesterol levels while lowering your HDL or good cholesterol levels. This is the perfect condition for heart disease to develop. It doesn’t take much weight loss to see improvement in you cholesterol levels, just five to ten percent of your body weight is enough. You can achieve a healthy weight through numerous diets and recipes.

Lifestyle Changes

You can reduce your bad cholesterol levels and raise the good with moderate exercise or about thirty minutes at least five times a week. You don’t have to overdo your exercise, often just a brisk walk will be enough to change your cholesterol levels. You can search the internet for sites that will help you to find the exercise program that is right for you. When it comes to diet you should include a lot of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean sources of protein. You should try to avoid meats, pastries, cookies and snack foods as much as possible.

Medication

There are certain medications that can directly cause a change in your cholesterol levels whether it is good or bad. When you begin taking any new medication be sure to ask your doctor how the drug will affect your cholesterol levels. If the medication has a risk of changing your levels then you may want to discuss an alternative medication with your doctor. If you have not medication alternative then you should make a good plan to monitor your lipid levels very closely.

Smoking

Smoking not only lower the good cholesterol in your system but it also increased oxidized bad cholesterol and accelerates the growth of atherosclerosis, all of these can place individuals at an increased risk of coronary heart disease. Although the sooner you stop smoking the better your chance of being able to reduce your risk of heart disease related to high cholesterol levels. Making lifestyle changes now will benefit your life for years to come.