Dangerously low cholesterol can increase your risk of serious health conditions. Low total cholesterol is related to cancer, depression, suicide, aggression and other disorders. When your good cholesterol, or high-density lipoprotein, is low, your risk of life-threatening heart disease elevates. Your doctor is best positioned to determine how to treat your cholesterol issues, especially when it comes to raising your total cholesterol or dangerously low low-density lipoprotein. However, you can give a healthy boost to your HDL with some modifications to your diet.
Healthy Fats
Eat heart-healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, called MUFAs and PUFAs. The American Heart Association recommends that you even replace some of the saturated fats and carbohydrates you eat with MUFAs and PUFAs, and that these healthy fats comprise at least 25 percent to 35 percent of your daily calories. You could replace one of your meat or poultry dinners with a fish entree, such as salmon, mackerel, sardines or trout. These fish will also give you a healthy dose of omega-3 fatty acids, a special type of PUFA. You'll also find MUFAs and PUFAs in olive, peanut and canola oils, soy products, dark leafy greens and nuts and seeds.
Eggs
You may have heard conflicting information about the health of eggs in relation to your cholesterol. A March 2008 study published in the "Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand" found that healthy adults who added an egg a day for 12 weeks significantly raised good cholesterol levels. The Thai participants already ate a diet that included eggs on a regular basis. The report challenged the advice of Thai public health officials to limit total dietary cholesterol by limiting egg consumption, an approach that is similar to the advice offered by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010.
Orange Juice
When a sample of adults with high total and bad cholesterol drank extra orange juice every day for four weeks,participants' HDL levels increased by 21 percent. That's the report of a group of Canadian researchers published in the November 2000 issue of the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition." The results were seen when participants drank at least 750 mL, roughly 3 cups daily. The authors pointed out that their results don't mean you should consume copious amounts of orange juice daily. Rather, they suggest that you follow the public health guidance on eating between 5 and 10 servings of fruits and vegetables daily. This is because it was the heart-protective nutrients in orange juice, like vitamin C and flavonoids, that gave the study its results. Those nutrients, in amounts equivalent to what's found in 750 mL of orange juice, can be provided in a variety of foods.
Lifestyle Matters Too
Food is not the only way to increase your HDL cholesterol. Your lifestyle counts just as much. The Mayo Clinic recommends that you quit smoking, exercise more and lose weight. The clinic advises that every six pounds you lose can increase your HDL by 1 mg/dL. Dr. Michael Roizen, of the Cleveland Clinic says that women who do aerobic exercise can increase their HDL by as much as 20 percent.
References
- Mayo Clinic; Can Your Total Cholesterol Be Too Low?; Thomas Behrenbeck
- Mercola.com; The Cholesterol Myth that is Harming Your Health; Joseph Mercola; Aug. 10, 2010
- "Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand"; High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Changes after Continuous Egg Consumption in Healthy Adults; Korapat Mayurasakorn et al.; March 2008
- Mayo Clinic; HDL Cholesterol: How to Boost Your Good Cholesterol
- “American Journal of Clinical Nutrition”; HDL-Cholesterol-Raising Effect of Orange Juice in Subjects with Hypercholesterolemia; Elzbieta M. Kurowska et al.; Nov. 2000
