Cholesterol and Exercise - The Positive Link

What is the link between cholesterol and exercise?

It is always good for those who are overweight to take off the excess. This is especially true for those who have elevated levels of LDL (harmful) cholesterol.

The best way to go about this is to alter the diet, eliminating that which you know to be unhealthy - high fat and empty calorie foods - and incorporating more fiber via fresh fruits and vegetables.

It is common knowledge that cutting calories needs to involve a change in not only what you eat, but the way you eat as well. Fat is probably the most concentrated source of calories we can eat, and fat and cholesterol go hand in hand. So, to begin with, eating foods lower in fat will automatically help lower cholesterol levels. These are foods such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

However, what is going to happen as you begin this, is the body is going to believe it is starving and will begin hoarding fat in reserve cells (about 35 billion of them) for future use. This is a safety precaution built into the body. Unfortunately, as the metabolism slows, it gets harder to take off weight.

Exercising, on the other hand, especially if performed regularly, helps you lose weight by burning a higher percentage of fat while maintaining muscle tissue. Besides burning calories, it also enables the rate at which the metabolism burns calories to be set higher.

How then, does the cholesterol and exercise connection come in?

Excess Weight and Removal of LDL Cholesterol

Though it is not known why, there has been a link established between high cholesterol (LDL or low-density lipoprotein) blood levels and excess weight. Researchers have found that, generally, overweight people tend to have high cholesterol.

Put simply, exercise works first by helping to lower weight with the addition of planned activity. Secondly, it works by actually stimulating enzymes to help move LDL cholesterol from the blood to the liver to be converted into bile. Bile is then prepared for digestion and readied for expulsion from the body. The more you exercise, the more LDL your body is able to eliminate - this explains the cholesterol and exercise link.

In what other way are cholesterol and exercise related?

Size of Low Density Lipoproteins

Low-density lipoproteins (protein particles) have been linked to such conditions as atherosclerosis and heart disease. Protein particles are the means by which cholesterol is carried through the blood. Some of these protein particles are quite large and fluffy in density, while others are small and compacted. It is the small, compacted ones that are dangerous to the body, as their size allows them access to the lining of the heart as well as blood vessels, where they get lodged and build up over time.

It is believed that exercise encourages these particles to increase in size. This is coupled with its ability to improve one's profile of both types of lipoproteins, good and bad - not only can LDL cholesterol be lowered up to 10%, but HDL (beneficial) cholesterol can be raised about 5%, too.

So, as you can see, there is a multiple beneficial connection between cholesterol and exercise.

Types and Frequency of Exercise

While most researchers encourage aerobic exercises - vigorous walking, swimming, running, jogging, or a combination of two or more - it is believed that many other forms of exercise can be just as beneficial in harnessing the positive link between cholesterol and exercise. These include, in particular, walking, bicycling, yoga, etc.

Regardless of what program a person ultimately chooses, it is the exercise that is the important factor in the lowering of cholesterol. Include 30 minutes throughout the day, as many times a week as possible.

Having read about the beneficial association between cholesterol and exercise, you may wish to learn about other remedies and treatments for reducing cholesterol naturally through the other related cholesterol articles and pages.

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