Improving My Ratio Of Good To Bad Cholesterol

As we have started to gain a better understanding of how cholesterol and the body interact more and more people are starting to ask how can I go about improving my ratio of good to bad cholesterol, and for good reason. What we are learning is that high density lipoproteins (HDL) also know as good cholesterol is your body’s own artery street sweeper. These tiny molecules seem to have two major advantages as it relates to improving my ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol. First, they carry bad cholesterol out of the body rather than depositing it in the arteries and second, they seem to have the ability to eliminate preexisting plaque deposits.

The bottom line is having a bunch of these busy little fellows running around in your bloodstream will not only reduce bad cholesterol levels but decrease your risk of joining the one million Americans that experienced a heart attack last year; half of which were fatal.

As far as ratios go the numbers vary somewhat depending on your risk factors. Common risk factors of heart attack and stroke include smoking, obesity, a family history of heart or coronary disease, a pervious heart attack, high blood pressure, diabetes, inactivity, and stress. If you fall into a high risk category, with two or more of these, you should have not more than two times more bad than good cholesterol. If you have zero or maybe one of the listed risk factors then 3 to 1 would be considered about average.

Finding ways of improving my ratio of good to bad cholesterol

*Diet: Reducing saturated fat is the key, and a heart healthy diet should include no more than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat. This will not be easy! You must learn to be an expert label reader, able to decipher tricky labeling and translating it into cold hard saturated fat, cholesterol, and triglyceride facts. You will want to increase your consumption soluble fiber such as oats, apples, and brussels sprouts which bind and eliminate bad cholesterol. Another good idea is consuming cold water fatty fish such as salmon and albacore tuna twice a week as recommended by the American Heart Association.

*Inactivity is your enemy: If you are asking how is the best way to go about improving my ratio of good to bad cholesterol there is not better answer than exercise. Research shows that inactive people tend to be overweight and have the worst bad to good cholesterol ratios. Regular physical activity of around 30 minutes, five or more days a week has been shown to narrow this gap dramatically. While this may be the case, make to get your doctors okay.

What else? When asking how can I go about improving my ratio to good to bad cholesterol, in most cases, it is about changing old habits, adopting new healthier habits, and enlisting the help of convention medications such as statins or natural cholesterol reducing remedies if needed. Put simply, this basically means finding ways to increase HDL (good cholesterol) and decrease LDL (bad cholesterol levels). Certainly the aforementioned statin drugs will be one of your options but they do carry a number of serious label warnings. The side effect risks have made
natural cholesterol reduction supplements combined with diet modification a safe and effective combination worth considering.

By: R.D. Hawkins

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R.D. Hawkins is an enthusiastic advocate for the use of natural health products and natural living with over 10 years experience in the field. Learn more about natural remedies and natural health at Purchase Remedies.com