How to Reduce High Cholesterol with Exercise

The right exercise regimen can help you reduce high cholesterol, lose weight, and improve heart health.

By Diana Rodriguez

Exercise has a number of benefits for your entire body, especially your heart. If you have high cholesterol, one good way to manage it is through a comprehensive, consistent exercise program that will help you lose weight and lower your cholesterol level.

Exercise: Helping Reduce High Cholesterol

Exercise can help to lower LDL, or "bad" cholesterol, raise HDL, or "good" cholesterol, and reduce heart disease risk by:

• Burning calories to aid weight loss
• Controlling diabetes
• Reducing high blood pressure
• Raising your heart rate
• Increasing your breathing rate and getting more oxygen to your body

Exercise: The Best Choices

All exercise is good for you and will improve your health, even just working in your yard, dancing in your living room, and cleaning your house. As far as a fitness routine goes, a solid program that incorporates both cardiovascular exercise (the kind that gets your heart rate going) and strengthening exercises offers many benefits. If you're overweight and have high cholesterol, you can bring your weight down through good cardio exercise.
Try these exercise options to help shed pounds and manage high cholesterol:

• Walking
• Jogging or running
• Swimming
• Taking an aerobics class
• Biking
• Playing tennis, basketball, or other sports
• Using weight machines or lifting free weights to build muscle tone