How to Achieve and Maintain a Healthy Cholesterol Level

Cholesterol is something that most of us encounter and battle with at one point or the other in our lives. So, what is cholesterol and why do we look to increase one level and decrease the other. What role does it play in your body?

The answers to the above questions and more can be found in the following:

What is Cholesterol and What is a Healthy Cholesterol Level?

Cholesterol is an essential substance that exists in our cells and flows through our blood stream. It has a waxy texture and the good cholesterol or HDL helps build cell membranes as well as various hormones. Bad cholesterol or LDL in high levels will clog the arteries which can lead to heart attacks in due course.

A healthy cholesterol level is of a minimum of 40 mg/dL of HDL and a maximum of 200mg/dL of LDL. Any alteration from these numbers and we need to take immediate action in order to bring it back to a healthy cholesterol level.

How to Maintain a Healthy Cholesterol Level

The first step to take in order to maintain a healthy cholesterol level is to regularly check it. The best way to know to do this is through a blood test.

Watch your weight. While cholesterol is not measured by weight, obesity will often come with high levels of bad cholesterol but at the same time it does not mean that someone who is slim or even under weight has good levels of cholesterol.

Bad cholesterol is found in trans fat and saturated fats so read all food labels and ensure you don’t eat too much food which contains high levels of these. There are many other types of food, which contain cholesterol, and such as eggs, milk, butter and poultry. The fact is you cannot remove all the food that contains cholesterol from your diet but you can and should control the portions.

If you are not sure what to eat then consult your doctor or dietician in order to obtain a custom made diet plan for you containing the right amount of cholesterol.

Awareness and understanding of your body will always help to keep you out of trouble especially if it helps to diagnose a diseases in its early stages. So take action to ensure you maintain a healthy cholesterol level while. Don't leave it until its too late and you end up in an emergency or worse.

Bad and Good Cholesterol Are Poles Apart

Every day you hear about the dangers of high cholesterol, about ways to lower your cholesterol and ways to avoid cholesterol in your diet. This kind of bad news would lead you to believe that cholesterol is a bad thing. Why does your body keep this awful stuff around anyway? But there's bad and good cholesterol.

Well, your body needs cholesterol to build and maintain cell membranes. The membranes need it to produce hormones, vitamin D and bile acids. The bile acids actually help to digest fat. Most cholesterol is made by your body itself. There is, however, bad and good cholesterol. Your body only needs a little good cholesterol in order to be able to function well. When your cholesterol is high it means you have too much bad cholesterol.

High Density Lipoprotein

Cholesterol is manufactured in the liver. Foods from animals also contain cholesterol – probably because animals have livers too. Some vegetables can also contain cholesterol and saturated fat. Cholesterol is a fat-like substance that bonds to a protein before beginning its journey through the bloodstream. When cholesterol bonds to a protein the result is a lipoprotein.

The test you take to measure bad and good cholesterol actually measures lipoproteins. These lipoproteins are sorted by their density which is the measure of fat versus protein in the combination. High density means that there is more protein compared to fat. High density lipoproteins (HDL) are your good cholesterol. They do the necessary work assigned to cholesterol, don’t clog up your arteries and help flush excess fat from your body.

Low density lipoproteins (LDL), very low density lipoproteins (VLDL) and triglycerides (a type of fat carried by LDL and VLDL) make up the bad cholesterol that cause plaque buildup on artery walls and predict heart disease.

Why do levels of bad and good cholesterol vary from person to person?

Factors that affect cholesterol levels include being overweight, a diet with too much saturated fat and cholesterol, not enough exercise, heredity and certain medical conditions or medicines. Cholesterol tends to increase with age too.

If your cholesterol is too high your doctor will help you find out the likely causes. In general, you can always increase good cholesterol and decrease bad cholesterol by watching your diet, exercising regularly and losing weight. In other words you need to follow a healthy lifestyle. You’ll need your doctor’s help with the other factors. Don’t worry about having too little cholesterol. That’s not likely to happen. Concentrate on having enough good cholesterol, less bad cholesterol and the rest will take care of itself.

What is a Good Cholesterol Level?

There are a number of reasons why it is important to understand what is considered to be a cholesterol level. One of the primary reasons is because having a high cholesterol level can make you more prone to dangers such as heart attacks and strokes. Although obesity is one of the most obvious symptoms or reasons for high cholesterol, just because you are not overweight does not mean that your cholesterol level is good.

Good Cholesterol Level Numbers

There are many things you need to take into consideration when you are trying to learn about and understand your cholesterol level. For example, did you know that there are both good and bad types of cholesterol? There is HDL cholesterol which is considered as being the good type of cholesterol and then there is LDL cholesterol which is considered as being the bad form of cholesterol.

Basically your cholesterol level will put into one of three categories, desirable, borderline risk or high risk. If your total cholesterol is less than 200mg/dL you are considered as being in the desirable category and your risk of heart attack is relatively low assuming all other risk factors are low.

If your cholesterol is in between 200 and 239mg/dL you are considered to be in the borderline risk category and about a third of all people end up in this category. If that applies to you you should have your cholesterol checked at least once a year especially if your HDL is less than 40mg/dL and/or you don’t have other risk factors for heart disease.

Finally, if your cholesterol level is 240mg/dL or more you are considered as being in the high risk category and your risk of heart attack and stroke is incredibly heightened. Also, you will have twice the risk of other coronary problems and so you must take action to return your body to a good cholesterol level immediately.

Basically the key point to remember is that the lower your LDL cholesterol, the lower your total cholesterol level will be. And since LDL is good cholesterol you should take all the measures you can in order to keep it as low as you can. If you find that you are not able to lower your cholesterol with self help measures, medications may be prescribed in order to return you to a good cholesterol level.

What is Your Cholesterol Ratio?

You have probably heard your doctor or a family member mentioned the importance of your cholesterol ratio at least once. But maybe yet did not make the effort to find out what it is and why should you maintain its levels. This article will put that right.

What is Cholesterol?

Cholesterol is something which is normally present in our cells and blood stream. It is an important part of our body system which helps to produce cell membranes and various types of hormones. However, there are two types of cholesterol and they are termed good cholesterol (HDL) and bad cholesterol (LDL). While the good is essential for our body the bad can cause fatal heart stokes by clogging the arteries.

The only way to find out your cholesterol ratio levels is to conduct a blood test. The normal levels of cholesterol are of a maximum 200mg/dL of LDL or less and a minimum of 40mg/dL or more of HDL.

Some doctors calculate the cholesterol ratio in order to make it easier for the patients to understand the cholesterol level.

How to Calculate the Cholesterol Ratio

In order to obtain your cholesterol ratio you first need to obtain the total cholesterol levels and then divide the HDL cholesterol level by the total cholesterol. Personally I always found it easier to calculate the HDL and LDL separately as well as monitor them in that fashion without working with the cholesterol ratio. However many find it easier to calculate and work with their cholesterol when they are aware of their cholesterol ratio.

Managing Your Cholesterol Levels

Besides the large amount of drugs available on the market for lowering and controlling cholesterol levels you can also play a big role by monitoring your food intake closely. Items that contain cholesterol and trans or saturated fats should be avoided. You can be helped with this by reading labels carefully before you purchase.

Exercising and eating healthily goes a long way towards staying fit and well and everyday practice will bring you a better and longer life. Also regular visits to your doctor will help you keep informed of your cholesterol levels as well as enable you to act before it becomes an emergency situation.

Cholesterol is not calculated by your weight. You can be slim and yet have high levels of cholesterol. Therefore watching the ingredients in your food becomes doubly important to maintaining a good cholesterol ratio since putting on weight is not a sufficient sign that you are at risk. Educate your self and lead a richer, healthier life.

A Common Cause of Heart Attacks is High LDL Cholesterol

LDL cholesterol (or the bad cholesterol) is known to be one of the main causes for heart disease leading to heart attack. This is because LDL cholesterol coats the inside of the arteries with fat narrowing them by building up debris on the inside which causes atherosclerosis. So you'd think that knowing how to lower LDL cholesterol and taking action upon your findings would improve the situation but this is not the case. Even people who have normal levels of LDL cholesterol or just a little high LDL levels can be at risk of developing atherosclerosis and heart attacks.

LDL Cholesterol ~ The Silent Killer

Knowing how to lower LDL cholesterol is no guarantee that this will prevent atherosclerosis and/or heart attack. There have been many times where the patient in question took the right medication, followed the right diet and exercise regime very seriously and was able to lower and keep their LDL cholesterol at the lowest possible levels. However, the same person still developed progressive atherosclerosis and still experienced mild heart attacks.

This happens even in ideal conditions, i.e. even when the patient does not indulge in unhealthy habits such as smoking, or heavy drinking of alcohol, etc. So, if at all possible it is better not to develop high LDL cholesterol levels in the first place.

Although it looks like knowing how to lowering LDL cholesterol will solve the problem, once the thickening of the arteries sets in this is not enough. It needs something that de-activates the atherosclerosis process to lower the risk of heart attack. This is possible only with the increasing of HDL cholesterol.

HDL cholesterol or good cholesterol is known to remove the debris of fat that has settled on the inside walls of the arteries, thus cleaning the pathway and enabling free flow of blood. The fat and other particles that the HDL cholesterol picks up from the clogged arteries are then sent to the liver which breaks them down and expels them out of the system.

Hence, in order avoid the dangers of heart disease and impeding heart attack it is necessary to avoid the formation of bad cholesterol in the first place. Secondly, it always pays to have increased levels of HLD cholesterol or the good cholesterol because of its ability to clear the arteries of the debris and hence keeping the cardio-vascular system safe and sound.

The studies that have been done till date have clearly indicated that increased LDL cholesterol can be fatally dangerous. The only way to combat the ensuing heart disease is to keep the bad cholesterol levels at the lowest possible in the blood and actively increase the formation of good cholesterol. Knowing how to lower LDL cholesterol levels is a help but it is not sufficent to improve your changes of avoiding heart problems.

Cholesterol Information You Need to KnowYou are probably bombarded with facts about cholesterol, medications, lifestyles and foods on a daily basis. Usually, these facts are associated with things you can buy – in other words, commercials. What cholesterol information do you need to know in order to avoid heart disease and live a healthy life? Where can you find this kind of cholesterol information? This article will address those questions

You and Cholesterol

On the whole, cholesterol information can be divided into two areas. These are nformation about you and information about everything else. Your doctor will ask you about your important cholesterol information. Know your numbers. Get a cholesterol test and find out how much good and bad cholesterol you have. Your doctor will tell you whether your numbers are too high. Do you smoke? Like so many other medical problems, high cholesterol is made worse by smoking. Maybe the most important question is “Why are you still smoking?”

Your medical history is very important. If your blood pressure is high you may already be feeling the effects of high cholesterol. Some medical conditions, like diabetes can increase cholesterol. Your family medical history is just as important.

While you may not know the cholesterol numbers of your ancestors their medical conditions can give your doctor a good idea of potential problems and whether they can be avoided by lifestyle changes or will require medication. Information about your lifestyle is also important. If your diet is good, your weight is under control and you exercise regularly you may be doing everything you can.

Other Cholesterol Information

To control cholesterol you need to know how it gets inside of you. You may be surprised to know that you make it yourself. Your body needs some cholesterol to function so your liver manufactures it. You don’t need to add any to your diet. Good cholesterol information includes where to find cholesterol in your food. Since cholesterol comes from your liver a good rule of thumb is if your food had a liver at some point in time it contains cholesterol. So, animal meats would fall into this category.

It's the same for dairy products. Cholesterol is found in the fatty part of the food. Whole milk contains more cholesterol than non-fat milk. In eggs the cholesterol is in the yolks. If your food has a nutrition label look at the saturated fat content. The best amount is zero grams. Such information about cholesterol percentages is very useful to you in creating a healthy diet for yourself.

Besides meat and dairy products, palm and coconut oils also contain saturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats are not bad for you unless they are hydrogenated. This is done to keep them stable in manufactured foods.

This should get you started. Read some more articles on this and other health sites, speak to your doctor and you will have all the cholesterol information you need to stay healthy.