High Cholesterol: What It Is And How To Bring It Down

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Thursday, November 13th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

You must have heard about high cholesterol, but you may not be sure of how to discover if you have such a condition and it is not quite as straightforward as you may expect. However, it is usually found in persons that are in their forties, and in case you are in that age group, it would be a good idea to visit your doctor for a checkup, or you may want to test for it by using a disposable home test kit.

Use A Home Testing Kit

Using a home testing kit, you can find out what the levels of cholesterol in your body are and in case you find that you have high cholesterol, or close to it being high, it is time for you to visit your doctor who will then perform a more appropriate blood test to help pinpoint the exact level of cholesterol in your body including both good (HDL) or bad (LDL) cholesterol.

The first thing your doctor will advise you about when it is found that you have high cholesterol is to ask you to make changes to your lifestyle, though of course, each case will have its own merits and when there is exceptionally high cholesterol levels in your body, you may even need to take drugs for bringing down the levels to more manageable levels. It is however, normal for you to first be a borderline case and a simple change in your lifestyle should be sufficient as well as efficient enough to bring down the levels of your cholesterol problem.

Changing your lifestyle would warrant that you change what you eat and also take to living a more active life, and you may need to switch to eating lean meats that do not have much fat or skin and even switch to chicken and fish in order to bring down your cholesterol level rather than eat red meat or meats that are fatty such as lamb or pork. Also, it would also be necessary to switch from frying your food to baking or broiling, which is preferable as too is steaming, roasting or grilling your food.

In addition, you should also take plenty of exercises and running, walking as well as jogging and even dancing or other related activities can help bring down your high cholesterol levels and keep you in better shape. Of course, you need to start off in a small way and work your way up as you become more attuned to each level of exercise, and you can also get advice from your doctor in this regard. As a last resort, you may be prescribed medicines to bring down your high cholesterol levels and using Statins has gained in popularity which is quite effective in bringing down the level of cholesterol, though of course, this should be your last option.

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