does exercise reduce cholesterol

What is and how can exercise help reduce it? Come and take a look.

Hi everyone and welcome back to Exercise for Health. I'm Ziyad ali, and today I'm going to be talking about high cholesterol and the effects of exercise, as well as explain what exercise is best to help produce it.

this website, we offer tips, advice and exercises each week to help you manage your health condition with physical activity.

Fatty substances

Well, basically if you have too much of the fatty substances called cholesterol and also triglycerides in your blood from eating foods high in saturated fat, not exercise enough, being overweight and even from smoking or drinking alcohol, your cholesterol levels following a simple blood test may be high.

This would be a total cholesterol reading of above 5. Now more comprehensive blood tests can determine the different composition of cholesterol in the blood.

 

Such as the levels of what is known as low density lipoproteins or Ladles and high-density lipoproteins or Hals. I'm going to put up on screen the list of healthy levels for each of these components because having a higher ratio of Hals compared to Ladles is actually beneficial for your health. So, let's look at why, Excuse me, who are you?

LDL

I'm an LDL. And me and my mates keeping these cholesterols for you so that we can smother your arteries to be able to clog them up and form some clots and maybe one day give you a heart attack or a stroke because we're nice like that.

Hey, you couldn't help me get some more mates? Could you buy in some fatty foods and stay and sat down a little bit more? Could you? No. OK, whatever. Excuse me, who are you?

Oh, hi. I'm in HDL and me and my friends are taking these cholesterols to the liver so you can get rid of them, if you know what I mean. And this keeps your arteries really clean and clear.

Don't do what LDL said because he's bad. But you can help me get more, my friends, because we're good. And you can do this by eating less of the fatty foods and exercise more. Yeah. OK, that sounds good. Yeah. Cool. Let's go.

So, exercise has been proven to actually increase the HDL count in the body, therefore reducing the ratio of Ladles and reducing your risk to coronary heart disease.

Obviously, your diet plays an important role too, ensuring that you reduce the amount of foods that are high in saturated fats like cakes, meat pies and hot cheeses, while ensuring you get more foods with unsaturated fats like oily fish, nuts and seeds.

Drinking alcohol

Drinking alcohol should also be kept to a minimum as well as quitting smoking if that's relevant to you. So what exercise is actually best? 

Well, any exercise is good and anything will be beneficial. But studies have shown that longer, lower intensity exercise does have an advantage in reducing cholesterol levels more than short term high intensity exercise.

So, examples would be going for a walk, a jog or run and cycling to work or for recreation.

Swimming

Swimming has also been found to be highly beneficial by reducing the risk of mortality, so if this is something you enjoy, it's highly recommended.

Fortunately, there's no limitations to exercise even if you've been diagnosed with high cholesterol and even if you're medicated for it, such as taking statins.

Obviously, as with all conditions, it will be dependent on whether you have additional health conditions alongside the high cholesterol, but having high cholesterol level by itself doesn't restrict what you can do, like having high blood pressure does.

 

High blood pressure

If you do suffer with high blood pressure then take a look at my video and exercising with that condition by clicking the pop-up banner above my head as there are more considerations to exercise.

So, your aim should be to exercise three to five times a week total in 150 minutes or 2 1/2 hours to ensure you have a lengthy warm up and cool down of about 6 to 10 minutes, maybe even longer especially if before or after during high intensity exercise.

 

Aerobic activity

To mostly take part in moderately intense aerobic activity where you'd elevate your heart rate to around 50 to 70% of your maximum. This will also be where you're feeling a bit puffed or slightly breathless, but still be able to maintain a conversation with someone. 

To use larger muscle groups when doing any resistance exercise or weight training, and you should be able to manage between 8:00 to 12:00 repetitions of the exercise. And finally, ensure that stretching and flexibility exercises form part of your routine alongside the aerobic and strength components.