Video: How to Maintain Your Triglycerides & Cholesterol

This Season: Tailgating; New Year, New You; Tax Time

Maintenance of triglycerides and cholesterol begins with knowing what the levels are and adjusting exercise and diet accordingly. Learn about how being overweight and eating high amounts of trans and saturated fats can lead to high cholesterol levels with help from a board-certified medical doctor in this free video on maintaining triglycerides and cholesterol.

- How to Reduce Cholesterol Through Diet
- How to Increase Low HDL Cholesterol

Video Transcript

Hi I'm Dr. Margaret Collins-Hill with Consults in Hypertension in Wilmington, North Carolina. The question this evening is how to maintain normal cholesterol and triglyceride levels. It's first important to know what your cholesterol and triglyceride levels are. The only way to find out about this is through a blood test that your doctor will do. There are basically two kinds of cholesterol, good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. In the bad category is total cholesterol the LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. The good cholesterol is HDL. Basically you want to try to lower your bad cholesterol as much as you can and you want to raise your good cholesterol as much as you can. The number one way to deal with this is through your diet and exercise. Unfortunately folks we are what we eat. Being overweight and eating high amounts of trans and saturated fats is a quick way to raise your cholesterol. You know these kind of fats by the fact that they're solid at room temperature and that they're derived from animal products. If you lean toward vegetable derived oils and fruits and vegetables, fiber, low fat dairy products you're definitely going to lower your cholesterol. You also want to consume alcohol only in moderation. For women one drink a day, for men, two drinks a day and no more. Exercise and weight loss will both lower bad cholesterol and raise good cholesterol. Even small amounts of weight loss can help and the kind of exercise you want to have you want to pursue, is the kind that raises your heart rate for at least twenty minutes. If you can do this every day it really helps. So to recap the way that you lower and maintain good cholesterol and bad cholesterol where they belong is to follow a healthy lifestyle. In some situations your doctor can help you decide whether medications are needed to help you with that.

Follow eHow: Follow @eHow

How to Maintain Your Triglycerides & Cholesterol

Related Ads

Related Articles & Videos