Cholesterol and Lowering HDL

Good health has always been a subject of great concern for everyone. We always talk about exercise, living a healthy lifestyle and eating healthy. But it was not always like this.

Decades ago, the concept of health was quite different from how we perceive it right now. Yes, the value of exercise was still very much mentioned but the concept of “healthy eating” was vastly different. As late as the 1960s, the tenets that surround healthy eating was quite different from what it is now. Just look at the popular media in those days. The Brady matriarch Marcia Brady would constantly feed her family red meat, specifically beef, in her belief that meat ensures that her kids need red meat to grow up healthy.

Fast forward to the present and the what used to be the bible truth before is now considered as one of the worst health mistakes one can take. We now know that red meat is not really a healthy option because of the large amount of fat that it contains. The same with a lot of processed foods. We are now more conscious about the stuff that we consume and let into our system.

An integral part of this new health consciousness is the increased awareness about cholesterol. With advances in nutrition research and medicine over the last few decades, cholesterol has been identified as the culprit in a number of diseases – most notably cardiovascular disease. This non-soluble waxy substance is a vital part for the maintenance of one’s health. It is used by the body to make hormones, cell walls and nerve sheaths. But even though cholesterol plays an important role in the body too much of one type of cholesterol can actually be bad for the health.

People might wonder why there is a reference to types of cholesterol. To better understand this, it would be good to know how cholesterol works in the body. The liver produces while your diet provides cholesterol. This is then transported by the LDL or bad cholesterol though the whole body as a way of maintaining vital body functions. The HDL, the good cholesterol, then brings back the cholesterol to the liver so that it can be recycled. This is done so that cholesterol does not build up too much in the blood stream. Health problem crop up when there is too much LDL and not enough HDL to carry the cholesterol back to the liver. This imbalance increases the cholesterol in the body, which can lead to heart disease.

From the way body works and handles cholesterol, we know that there are two different types of cholesterol in the body, the bad cholesterol (LDL) and good cholesterol (HDL). It does not take much thinking to realize that what nutritionists and physicians want us to do is to lower bad cholesterol and increase good cholesterol.

How exactly do you do that?

Fortunately, because of developments in nutrition and medical research there are ways of increasing the good cholesterol in your body. With proper nutrition and a healthy lifestyle you can exactly do that and be on the road to good health and low cholesterol.

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