How Do I Increase My Hdl Mayo Clinic

Overview

Need to Lower Your Cholesterol? We Can Help

Cholesterol really matters. How much you lot inquire? For every one percent decrease in your cholesterol, your run a risk of developing center illness decreases by two percent.

That's why it'southward of import for you to lower high cholesterol whether yous are looking to prevent heart disease or are trying to prevent any further damage following a heart attack.

Lower cholesterol is possible

While lowering your cholesterol may seem like a daunting task, it is possible. At Cleveland Clinic's Preventive Cardiology & Rehabilitation programme, a long-term study of its patients showed pregnant improvements in LDL management – fifty-fifty as early every bit the second follow-up visit – for both patients taking statins and those who are statin intolerant. In patients who do not tolerate statins, we tin can typically achieve on average an additional thirty signal reduction in LDL cholesterol in the Preventive Cardiology Clinic using a combination of alternative medications and approaches.

If you accept high cholesterol or other hazard factors for developing heart affliction, Cleveland Clinic'south Preventive Cardiology & Rehabilitation programme tin help. We evaluate our patients' health with very special attention to modifiable adventure factors, especially hyperlipidemias, such equally loftier LDL cholesterol, increased triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, high blood pressure, homocysteine, as well as sedentary lifestyle, obesity and diabetes.

Our squad is familiar with the latest and almost effective drugs for lowering cholesterol as well as for hypertension and diabetes. Besides prescribing medications to manage your cardiac chance, we can as well prescribe highly individualized lifestyle adjustments that can raise your efforts to stay well and symptom-free. Although many people know the importance of a middle-healthy lifestyle, few are sure of how to implement healthier ways of living in their own day-to-day lives.

How to kickoff

If yous haven't had a recent cholesterol screening, be sure to get one on your agenda. Experts recommend getting a cholesterol panel at 20 years of age, and and so every v years. If you have high risk factors for centre affliction, your doctor may recommend a yearly bank check.

It is all-time to accept a test called a "lipoprotein contour." This blood test is done after fasting for nine to 12 hours and provides a snapshot of your total cholesterol, LDL (bad) cholesterol, HDL (good) cholesterol and triglycerides (a type of fat in your claret).

Your goal should be:

Full cholesterol (a measure of HDL, LDL and other lipoproteins)
- Less than 200 mg/dL
Triglycerides
- Less than 150 mg/dL
LDL (Low-density lipoprotein)
- Less than 130 mg/dL
- Less than 100 mg/dL for those with middle or blood vessel affliction and for those with diabetes or high full cholesterol
HDL (High-density lipoprotein)
- Greater than 55 mg/dL (females)
- Greater than 45 mg/dL (males)

Making your numbers shrink

The showtime line of attack for lowering your cholesterol is a combination of changes in lifestyle: diet, exercise and weight loss.

Diet

A centre-salubrious nutrition from the National Cholesterol Education Programme called the TLC (therapeutic lifestyle changes) diet can assistance lower your cholesterol. This is a low-saturated-fat, low-cholesterol eating plan that calls for less than vii pct of calories from saturated fat and less than 200 mg of dietary cholesterol per twenty-four hour period. The TLC diet recommends merely enough calories to maintain a desirable weight and avert weight gain. If your LDL is non lowered enough by reducing your saturated fatty and cholesterol intakes, you tin can increase the amount of soluble cobweb (remember: oats, oranges, beans) in your diet. You can also add certain food products that contain plant stanols or plant sterols (such as cholesterol-lowering margarines) to heave your diet'south LDL-lowering ability.

Aim for thirty minutes of concrete activity on most, if non all, days. Information technology can assistance enhance HDL and lower LDL and is peculiarly of import for those with high triglycerides and/or low HDL levels, who are overweight with a large waist measurement (more than than 40 inches for men and more than 35 inches for women). Your activeness should exist of moderate intensity, which means y'all are able to carry on two to three word sentences. Effort running, walking briskly, swimming or dancing.

Weight loss

Losing weight if you are overweight tin assistance lower LDL and is especially important for those with a cluster of take chances factors that includes high triglycerides and/or low HDL levels and existence overweight with a large waist measurement. Research shows that women whose waist measures more than 35 inches and men more than than twoscore inches are at a greater gamble for developing center disease. What'south more, the ratio of this waist measurement relative to your hip measurement appears to be one of the strongest predictors of the chances of having a heart set on.

If it'south not low plenty

If y'all aren't able to lower your cholesterol plenty through lifestyle changes, your doc may recommend you begin drug handling. (You will still need to continue your lifestyle changes to continue the dose of medicine as depression as possible, and lower your risk in other ways!) In that location are several types of drugs bachelor for cholesterol lowering including statins, bile acid sequestrants, nicotinic acid, fibric acids and cholesterol absorption inhibitors. Your doctor can help decide which blazon of drug is best for you.

To make an appointment with whatsoever of our Preventive Cardiology specialists, please call 216.444.9353. For more than information on implementing a low cholesterol nutrition, contact Preventive Cardiology by telephone at 216.444.9353 or toll-gratuitous at 800.223.2273, ext. 49353.

Lipids: What you should know

Cholesterol and triglycerides are the 2 main types of fat molecules — or lipids — in the body. Without them, the body could not function. For instance, cholesterol is an essential component of cell membranes and is used by the torso to produce vitamin D and hormones such every bit estrogen. Information technology as well is used to produce substances that assist digestion. Triglycerides are a major source of free energy.

The body has 2 main sources of cholesterol and triglycerides: the liver and your diet. Cholesterol is found only in animal products (meat, milk, cheese, butter and foam). For some people, eating excesses of cholesterol-rich foods will raise claret cholesterol levels. In normal, healthy humans, the liver produces all the cholesterol the body needs, and then you really don't need supplemental cholesterol from your diet.

Triglyceride levels can be elevated for a number of reasons: backlog saccharide, alcohol, fat or calories or uncontrolled diabetes. In addition, some medical conditions and medications, or your genetic makeup, can cause elevated triglyceride levels.

Cholesterol and triglycerides travel throughout the body via the bloodstream, but but with the help of lipoproteins — LDL and HDL — which ferry these fat molecules to diverse destinations. LDL, or low-density lipoprotein, is known as the bad cholesterol considering it sneaks through artery walls and unloads cholesterol at that place. This is how coronary artery disease, the about mutual type of atherosclerosis, begins and progresses. HDL, or high-density lipoprotein, clears cholesterol from the bloodstream and ferries it back to the liver for removal from the body. HDL can also help clear the cholesterol that LDL leaves embedded behind artery walls. That's why it'due south called the good cholesterol.

And then, in general, optimal lipid levels are characterized past depression levels of LDL and high levels of HDL.