Exercise Lowers Cholesterol

Exercise can help to lower cholesterol by helping you lose weight. When you are overweight, it increases low-density lipoprotein (LDL) in your blood, which is the kind of cholesterol that has been tagged as causing heart disease.

In the past, it was assumed that diet had the most effect on cholesterol in our bodies, and that perhaps exercise might assist in some respects. However, doctors and other health professionals have recently been questioning the conventional theories and putting exercise higher on their lists when it comes to good health.

Recent studies have carefully examined the effect of exercise alone on cholesterol to evaluate the relationship.

Researchers believe several things: exercise stimulates enzymes that help move LDL from the blood to the liver, and also that once in the liver the cholesterol is converted into bile or excreted. The more exercise you do, then, the more cholesterol you expel. Exercise also increases the size of the protein particles that carry cholesterol in our blood, which is important for keeping it moving out of our system and not lodging in our arteries where it can cause problems, but instead helping to sweep our vessels clean.

There is a constant debate as to how much exercise is needed to lower cholesterol. Most public health organizations recommend, at a minimum, 30 minutes per day of cardiovascular exercise, such as walking, running, biking, or swimming.

But a 2002 Duke University study concluded that more intense exercise is actually best for lowering cholesterol. They studied overweight, sedentary subjects. They did not change their diets, but did change their activity level. Those who got put on the moderate activity level did lower their LDL a little, but those with a more intense level lowered LDL quite significantly, while also raising their "good" HDL cholesterol levels. Changes of 10-15%, even 20% in some cases, were seen with those put on a high intensity exercise routine. Short bursts of highly intense exercise have been proven in many studies to do the most good for our bodies in many different ways.

Health professionals nowadays are recommending short, intense exercise sessions for many reasons, one of the most important being cholesterol reduction.

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Sammie Clemmons
Fitness Coach
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