Reducing Cholesterol Levels

How to Reduce Cholesterol Quickly 

Once you find out you have a problem, you probably want to know how to reduce cholesterol quickly as you can. But exactly how quickly it can be done depends on a lot of very variables. It depends most of all on how willing you are to make a strong commitment and do what it takes to bring it down.

It can't be done overnight. Lose that idea right away. And it usually takes more than a week or two, even with the help of cholesterol reducing drugs.

How to reduce cholesterol quickly through diet and exercise Reducing cholesterol naturally, without medications, means you'll have to focus on diet and exercise. Let's start there.

You can start by eating a low fat, low cholesterol foods that contain little or no saturated fats or trans fats. To see a list of such foods, click on cholesterol free foods. Because your body makes all the cholesterol you need, you don’t actually need to take in cholesterol from food at all.

You can eat fish, nuts (particularly walnuts and almonds), oatmeal and bran, and foods with added stanols. There are also many high cholesterol foods to avoid. To learn more specific information on these, read our article on on ways to a lower LDL diet.

Aerobic exercise, including just walking more throughout the day, can help lower your bad cholesterol too. It can also help shed pounds that may be increase your heart disease risk. As you add exercise to your life, it helps you to create an overall healthy lifestyle.

Weight loss is an important way to lower LDL and raise HDL. A proper diet and exercise routine can help with weight loss, and all of these activities combined can have a very significant effect in lowering your risk of heart disease and stroke.

How to reduce cholesterol quickly with drugs If your lifestyle changes do not lower your cholesterol significantly after 6 months to one year, or you have other risk factors, your doctor may choose to prescribe cholesterol reducing medications. The most prescribed cholesterol-lowering medications, a group known as statins, block the effects of an enzyme that creates cholesterol.

The better known cholesterol reducing drugs include Simvasatatin, Pravastatin, Atorvastatin, Cerivastatin, Fluvastatin, and Lovastatin. 

Other medications may be used to help you reduce cholesterol quickly, depending on your particular situation. These usually reduce cholesterol levels more quickly than diet and exercise alone, but it's not the same for everyone. Once again, a lot depends on a widfe range of variables.

An important step in reducing cholesterol quickly as you can is knowing what your numbers are and what they mean. There are several components to your "cholesterol numbers."

LDL is the so called "bad" cholesterol, which clogs arteries and increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. This number should optimally be below 100mg/dL. LDL stands for low density lipoproteins.

HDL, or good cholesterol, attaches to LDL cholesterol and transports it to the liver, where it is then "out-processed." HDL stands for high density lipoproteins, and they help reduce bad cholesterol levels. This number should be at least 60mg/DL.

When your doctor refers to "total cholesterol," this means the total of LDL and HDL added together. This number is not as important as your individual numbers.

We have related information on ways of lowering cholesterol levels and how to lower cholesterol without medications. 

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