High Levels of Good Cholesterol Are Good for Your Health

Most people associate cholesterol with clogged arteries which in turn may cause a heart attack or stroke and thus would shudder when told that their cholesterol levels were high. Though high cholesterol levels are not good news, when it concerns good cholesterol, there is actually reason to be happy because the higher your good cholesterol levels are, the better it is for your health.

More Protein, Less Fat

Before you start to get worried that you have high cholesterol levels it is actually a good idea to understand what good cholesterol really is. In fact, HDL cholesterol is good cholesterol. It refers to having more of protein and less of fat and its function are to travel to various parts of the body while picking up fat from arteries, which it transports back to the liver to be repackaged for other kinds of uses.

It is easy to see that if a person has high good cholesterol then more fat will be eliminated from their blood stream and the lesser are the chances of plaque building up in the arteries. Thus, your body will profit from high levels of good cholesterol and it will not even matter so much that your total cholesterol exceeds the acceptable mark of two hundred mg/dl.

In fact, it would be a good idea for you to learn about how you can get good cholesterol into your body and in this regard it will pay for you to know which foods contain more of HDL. Unfortunately, however, HDL is not found in foods and HDL in fact is in fact a way in which the body packages protein and fat combinations, and so the foods that you eat will be packaged according to their cholesterol and saturated fat content. What's more, though you can find foods that do not contain much of cholesterol, there are no foods that can raise good cholesterol levels.

The only way to improve good cholesterol is through exercise and by quitting smoking as well as perhaps drinking an occasional glass of red wine. The bottom line is that high good cholesterol may have something to do with your genetic makeup. You can also improve your good cholesterol levels by eating foods with low fat content and eliminating saturated fats such as those found in tropical oils and animal products. In addition, you may benefit from eating fibers such as oat bran and Metamucil.