How To increase HDL?

How To increase HDL?

To increase HDL and Lowering your Cholesterol you need to

1-Building a Cholesterol-Lowering Diet that increase HDLs

Eating a lot of foods high in dietary cholesterol increases the amount of cholesterol in your blood and raises your risk of heart attack. So, controlling the cholesterol in your diet reduces the risk of two potential problems in your

arteries.

Cholesterol is a saturated fat found only in foods from animals: meat, dairy products, and eggs.

Dietary-cholesterol problem #1: cholesterol and perhaps homocysteine (an amino acid produced when you digest food — the jury is still out on this amino acid) can rough up the linings of your arteries, creating teensy little crags that snag cholesterol particles as they float by. The trapped cholesterol particles snag other debris floating through your blood, producing small piles of gunk (technical term: plaque) that narrow and may eventually block the artery, leading to the unpleasant event called a heart attack.

Dietary-cholesterol problem #2: Extra cholesterol in your diet may also increase the amount of low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) in your blood. LDLs, also known as “bad” cholesterol, are the fat and protein particles that ferry cholesterol into your arteries, leading to problem #1.

Conclusion? Adding foods high in cholesterol can mess up any diet, which certainly explains why every description of a cholesterol-lowering diet calls the diet low cholesterol and controlled fat.

You keep the cholesterol low and you control the kinds of fat by following the 30-10-300 formula

• Less than 30 percent of your total calories each day from fat — predominantly unsaturated fats
• Less than 10 percent of your total calories each day from saturated fat
• Less than 300 milligrams of cholesterol per day, regardless of your calorie count

After you decide to control your cholesterol by controlling the amount of fat in your diet, the question is,

which foods work best and which foods aren’t that hot?

Grains: Grains have very small amounts of fat — just about 3 percent of their total weight — and most of the fats in grains are unsaturated. In addition, grains are filling, and they have dietary fiber. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDA/HHS) says that a healthy diet is based on grain foods. Who am I to argue?

Fruits and veggies: Fruits and vegetables have only traces of fat, and most of it is unsaturated. Your diet should have a lot of fruits and veggies. But you knew that, right?

Dairy products: Dairy products are a varied lot. For example, sweet cream is a high-fat food. Whole milks and whole-milk cheeses are moderately high in fat. Skim milk and skim-milk products are low-fat foods. And for the record, most of the fats in any dairy product are saturated, but milk products are your best source of calcium, so balance the fats and get your calcium by sticking to low- or no-fat dairy products — and don’t forget the yummy low- or no-fat frozen desserts.

Meat and poultry: Meat is moderately high in fat, and most of its fats are saturated. Some poultry — chicken and turkey — are relatively low in fat. Other poultry — duck and goose — have higher fat contents. You can lower the fat content of any poultry serving by removing the skin. I know; I know. That’s the good part! But your cholesterol levels will thank you.

Fish and shellfish: Fish and shellfish are special cases. Some fish, such as salmon and herring, are high in fat, but guess what? Those are the best fish from a cholesterol standpoint because their fats are rich in omega-3 fatty acids , polyunsaturated fatty acids credited with lowering your risk of heart disease.

Fats and oils: Vegetable oils, butter, and lard are high-fat foods, but their actual fat content varies from heart healthy to are-you-kidding-me!

Proteins: Protein is an essential nutrient — so important that its name comes from the Greek word proteios, which means “holding first place.” A protein molecule is a chain of other molecules called amino acids, the building blocks of protein. Amino acids are molecules made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms, plus a nitrogen unit called an amino group. The amino group is essential for synthesizing (creating) specialized proteins, including the enzymes and hormones that make it possible for you to perform such basic functions as working your muscles and digesting food. So, when people talk about how much protein they need, what they really mean is how much nitrogen they need to synthesize specialized proteins.

Your body also uses proteins to build new cells and maintain tissues. Considering all that, you may be puzzled as to why it has taken me so long to get around to talking about protein. The reason is simple. Some protein foods are positively loaded with cholesterol and saturated fatty acids:

Animal protein: The only foods that add cholesterol to your diet are foods from animals — meat, poultry, fish, milk products, and eggs. Most of these foods are also high in saturated fatty acids. True, some animal foods have less cholesterol than others. True, some animal foods are lower in saturated fats. True, you can cut the fat and cholesterol content of animal foods by trimming visible fat. True, some animal foods are rich in special unsaturated fats called omega-3s that actually reduce everybody’s risk of heart disease. But generally, a diet designed to lower your cholesterol emphasizes foods from plants.

Omega-3

It’s clear that laboratory pigs and monkeys have cleaner arteries when their feed includes omega-3 fatty acids, and studies suggest human beings may also benefit. In the Diet and Reinfarction Trial (DART), a 2,033-man study run by the Medical Research Council Epidemiological Unit in Cardiff, Wales, in the late 1980s, men who ate two servings of fatty fish a week had a lower rate of heart attack than men who either cut their fat to no more than 30 percent of their total calories or increased their dietary fiber (from grains) to 16 grams a day. Yo, bring on the salmon!

But don’t forget the chocolate or at least the very special new chocolate form Canada. In the summer of 2007, Ocean Nutrition Canada Limited, a company that makes and distributes omega-3 food and dietary supplement ingredients, announced that the O Trois line of chocolate bars and “fingers” from Les Truffes au Chocolat, would hence forth contain omega-3 fatty acids. Who can ask for anything more?

Plant protein: Getting your protein from plant foods is a more complicated task than getting your protein from animal foods. Blame it on the amino acids (those “building blocks” of protein). Proteins from animals are labeled complete, meaning that they contain all the amino acids human beings need to thrive. Proteins from plant foods are often characterized as limited, meaning that they lack sufficient amounts of one amino acid or another. It takes a little work to mix and match plants to get the proper protein balance, but with no cholesterol and practically no saturated fatty acids, plant proteins are worth the effort, don’t ya think? At least once in a while.

2- Getting the healthful weight and HDLs

You don’t have to be enormously overweight to experience a connection between your higher weight and a higher risk of heart disease. Being as little as 20 percent over your suggested healthy weight — which I get to in a minute — raises your total cholesterol and your “bad” LDLs while lowering your “good” HDLs.

But don’t despair. Losing weight reverses the equation. Diet and exercise away those extra pounds, and your not-so-hot LDLs will start to fall while your hot-stuff HDLs begin to rise.

If you’re overweight, losing weight makes you look and feel better. It also lowers your total cholesterol and raises your HDLs.

Regular exercise is such an efficient weight loss technique that the American Society of Bariatric Physicians (the group of fine folks who treat weight disorders) considers a regular exercise plan the number one predictor for long term weight stability.

In other words, you can lose weight by cutting calories, but according to the bariatric docs, you’ll lose pounds faster and keep them off longer if you exercise.

Exercise can also change your body shape — and not just by making your muscles bulge. For example, exercise can transform a person’s “fruit” shape from the round-in-the middle “apple” shape known to carry a higher risk of heart attack to a slimmer, trimmer . . . banana? Carrot? No, wait. That’s a vegetable. Well, you get the idea.

3-Smoking and HDLs levels

The relationship between smoking and cholesterol is straightforward. Over time, lighting up and inhaling all those deep, “flavorful” breaths will

• Increase your total cholesterol levels.
• Decrease the level of your high-density lipoproteins (HDLs), the “good” cholesterol
• Hasten the buildup of cholesterol plaque on damaged blood-vessel walls.
• Constrict your blood vessels, increasing the risk that a passing clump of cholesterol may block blood flow.
• Increase the level of triglycerides in your blood, another risk factor for heart attacks .
• Double your risk of heart attack, regardless of your cholesterol level.

That last point deserves serious attention, Although many studies demonstrate a relationship between smoking and heart disease, many smokers are convinced that having a low cholesterol level reduces their risk of smoking-related heart disease. They’re wrong. Low cholesterol levels don’t protect smokers from heart disease. I can say this with impunity because I’ve read the results of the Korea Medical Insurance Company Study,( East Asia) the first effort to pin down a relationship between smoking, cholesterol levels, and the risk of heart attack

East Asia is a part of the world that’s best known for gorgeous scenery and scrumptious food. But it’s also known for having a large population of smokers and a rate of heart disease that’s now among the highest in the world. The confusing part of this equation has been that East Asians have a high risk of heart attack even though they generally have low cholesterol levels. A good guess to clear up this confusion may be that their love of smoking is an independent risk factor against which low cholesterol offers no protection.

Based on the number of men who were either hospitalized or died from heart attack or stroke during the study, the researchers found that smoking significantly increased the risk of heart attack and stroke. Even among men with very low cholesterol levels, smokers had a risk of heart attack and stroke that was 330 percent higher than that of nonsmokers. Conclusion? As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “This study demonstrates that . . . a low cholesterol level confers no protective benefit against smoking related atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.”

Translation: Low cholesterol levels provide no protection for smokers against heart disease caused by smoking.

4- Drinking and HDLs levels

The Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS), funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) was designed to evaluate risk factors for heart disease in men and women 65 and older. Data from the 1,850-person study, which ran from 1989 to 1999, has served as a base for more than 400 research papers and 120 follow-up studies. In 2007, a team of researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston), the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Vermont (Burlington) and the University of Washington (Seattle) combed through the CHS’s data in search of medical gold. What they found was that men and women who consumed 7 to 13 drinks a week had the highest number of small LDLs, which have a higher chance of getting into the arteries, thus increasing their risk of blockage. Score another round for moderation — one to two drinks a day.