Cholesterol Healthy Heart

Almost like the reverse side of a coin, exercise goes with diet to improve unhealthy cholesterol levels and maintaining a healthy heart. Just as the foods we eat affect both LDL and HDL, so does activity. Regular exercise will help lower the level of (bad) LDL in your blood and increase your (good) HDL level.

Reasons why exercise helps control cholesterol:

1) It helps you lose weight. And, after you’ve lost any extra weight, it helps you
keep it off. Being overweight tends to increase the amount of LDL (the kind
of cholesterol associated with heart disease) in your blood. It’s also
overworks your heart as a muscle and all your other muscles as well.
—Remember it doesn’t really work to take any one facet of your body and try
to regard it without considering its relationship to the whole. The human body
is an integrated entity.

2) It stimulates your body to makes enzymes that help cholesterol “move along” in the blood stream. Keeping it moving keeps LDL from settling on artery walls and hardening—gets it to the liver where it’s broken down to be expelled from your body. (So, the more that gets there, the better.)

3) It causes your body to increase the size of the carrier proteins to which cholesterol is attached in the blood. The combination of the cholesterol and its carrier is called a lipoprotein: there are two basic forms—LDL (bad) and HDL (good). This increase in size is significant especially with regard to LDL. Molecules of LDL cholesterol are smaller and more compact than those of HDL. Its small size lets LDL settle into creases and irregularities of your artery walls where it hardens into a plaque that creates an environment conducive to heart disease. Increasing the size of the carrier decreases the risk of LDL finding a place to stick and so contributes to a healthy heart.

Even without knowing the specifics of how or why it lowers cholesterol risk and promotes heart health most of us hear that we need to exercise so often that we at least will give it lip service as being true. What you may not know (or fear to learn) is what kind of exercise and how much of it you need to do. Therefore, it may come as a surprise that activities of even moderate intensity help reduce your risk of heart disease—if done daily. These kinds of activities include walking, yard work, swimming, dancing, biking, etc. You may already enjoy doing some of these… And you don’t have to do the same thing everyday. In fact, it may be better to vary your exercise from day to day. (Variety helps some people stay interested.) As for the commitment of time, health oriented organizations recommend a minimum of 30 minutes a day—most of us can surely find that amount of time.
In addition to changing cholesterol levels, exercise yield other heart healthy benefits. It helps control weight, diabetes, and high blood pressure. It works and, therefore, strengthens your heart (and lungs).
Of course, there’s a catch. Like almost everything else, when exercising to change cholesterol levels, it can be said, “You get out of it, what you put into it.” Moderate activity for a minimum amount of time is good; vigorous activity for longer periods of time will yield more impressive results and it’s wise to seek advice from your health care professional so you can devise a plan that fits your needs.
Physical inactivity adds to the risk factor for heart disease. Exercise contributes to a healthy heart in more ways than just controlling cholesterol levels.