Controlling Cholesterol with Exercise
High cholesterol is one of the leading indicators of health risk, particularly heart disease risk. If your total cholesterol level is above the recommended 200 mg/dL level you are at twice the risk for developing heart disease! According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 71 million (33%) Americans have high cholesterol and only 1/3 of those individuals have their condition under control.
Cholesterol itself, however, is not bad for you. It is used to create important hormones in your body, like testosterone and estrogen, and create bile in your liver. In fact, it is so important that your body makes cholesterol on its own, just in case you aren't getting enough from your diet.
Unfortunately, poor diet, lack of exercise, smoking, and genetics can all lead to elevated cholesterol levels. When cholesterol gets too high plaque begins to form on the inside of your arteries, ultimately leading to heart disease.
Fortunately, this result is not inevitable. Regular exercise has been proven to prevent, manage, and reverse the onset and development of high cholesterol.
Exercise as Prevention
Exercise status is one of the largest predictors of high cholesterol and heart disease risk. Regular exercise increases your HDL levels (the "good" cholesterol), lowers your LDL levels (the "bad" cholesterol), reduces your chance of becoming overweight or obese, and reduces your blood pressure.
More specifically, regular exercise alters the activity and production of enzymes in your body associated with reverse cholesterol transport. This means that more cholesterol is transported from your body to your liver for processing and excretion. Also, exercise has been linked to changes in Lipoprotein size. Lipoproteins are the substances that carry cholesterol in your blood stream. Low-density lipoproteins (LDL) are generally considered more harmful to your body and are smaller than the high-density lipoproteins (HDL). Exercise increases the size of lipoproteins, thus boosting HDL levels.
While genetics may predispose you to a higher risk of developing high cholesterol, few things will combat it better than regular exercise.
Exercise as Treatment
It is never too late to start exercising, even if you have already been diagnosed with high cholesterol. The same mechanisms that aid in preventing high cholesterol can act to reduce your current cholesterol levels once they are deemed "high," Exercise, particularly when paired with a healthy diet, can reduce high LDL levels by as much as 20%!
While exercise and nutrition may not act as quickly as cholesterol medication (i.e. statin drugs), they benefit a far greater range of issues simultaneoulsy and without the plethora of side effects. Common side effects of statin drugs include headache, upset stomache, diarrhea, nausea, dizziness, flushing of the skin, and constipation. On the other hand, the side effects of exercise include lower body weight, lower blood pressure, increased muscle mass, lower body fat, better mood, better sleep, better digestion, and higher productivity, along with a lower risk of diabetes, dementia, cancer, osteoperosis, and stroke.
Exercise truely is medicine, and should be front and center in everyone's medicine cabinet.
What to do?
The American College of Sports Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend 150 minutes (2 1/2 hours) of moderate-intensity activity each week to reduce your risk of high cholesterol. Something as simple as going for a walk counts as "moderate intensity" and the bouts can be broken up into as little as 10 minutes. Try to fit 10 minutes in before work, over lunch, and in the evening and before you know it you'll hit your 150 for the week! Greater than 150 minutes per week will create even greater benefit, as will vigorous intensity activity. In fact, just 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity (i.e. jogging) will drastically decrease your risk too.
Now get out there and get moving!