Cholesterol is a fatty substance produced in the liver and used by your body to produce steroid hormones and cell membranes. About 75 percent of the cholesterol in your bloodstream comes from your liver, and the other 25 percent from the foods you eat. When your blood cholesterol levels are too high, you develop plaques on the inside of your arteries and are at risk for coronary heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure and stroke. Medical experts have identified several lifestyle changes that can lower your blood cholesterol.
Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes Diet
The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute recommends a therapeutic lifestyle changes, or TLC diet, to lower blood cholesterol. The TLC diet emphasizes eating only the calories you need to maintain an ideal weight. NHLBI advises choosing foods that provide less than 7 percent of your daily calories from saturated fats and less than 200mg of cholesterol in the foods you eat each day. Avoid high-cholesterol foods like liver and other organ meat, egg yolks and full-fat dairy products. You should also limit your intake of trans fats found in commercial baked goods, since they increase low-density lipoprotein, or bad cholesterol, levels. Soluble fiber from foods like oats, oranges, legumes and vegetables can help lower your total cholesterol, as can commercial products, like cholesterol-lowering margarine.
Physical Activity
Regular physical activity serves two purposes, says MayoClinic.com. It lowers your LDL cholesterol and raises your high-density lipoprotein, or good cholesterol. When you don't exercise enough, your cholesterol level increases. NHLBI recommends 30 minutes of physical activity on most, if not all, days of the week. Choose activities you enjoy, enlist a buddy to keep you motivated and do 30 to 60 minutes a day in one or more sessions, advises MayoClinic.com.
Weight Management
Exercise also helps combat other factors that increase your blood cholesterol, including being overweight and a large waist size. By maintaining a healthy weight, you can lower your LDL cholesterol and reduce your waist measurement to a target of less than 40 inches for men or 35 inches for women, says NHLBI.
Medications
When lifestyle changes aren't enough to bring your blood cholesterol levels to an acceptable range, your doctor may prescribe medications. Statins are the most commonly used drugs for high cholesterol, and they work by blocking a substance your liver needs to produce cholesterol. Other medicines for high cholesterol include bile-acid-binding resins that stimulate your liver to bind excess blood cholesterol into bile acids. Cholesterol absorption inhibitors limit the amount of cholesterol your small intestine absorbs from the foods you eat, says MayoClinic.com.
