High Cholesterol
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What is high cholesterol?
Cholesterol is a waxy substance found throughout the body. Your liver makes cholesterol and the cholesterol from your liver is all the cholesterol your body needs to build cells, make vitamins, and make other hormones. But saturated and trans fats in foods from animals like meat, poultry, dairy, and tropical oils (palm, palm kernal, coconut) adds additional cholesterol in the body.
Cholesterol isn’t bad, it’s important to our body’s function, but too much can cause health risks. Cholesterol circulates in the blood. Having high cholesterol is when you have too much cholesterol in your blood. Cholesterol can slowly build up in the arteries as a hard deposit that narrows the arteries and decreases their flexibility.
High cholesterol can contribute to higher risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Lowering High Cholesterol
Lowering high cholesterol can lower your risk of heart disease, heart attacks, and stroke. Usually treatment plans for lowering high cholesterol includes medication, lifestyle change, or a combination.
Your goal when treating high cholesterol is to reduce your LDL (bad cholesterol) and increase your HDL (good cholesterol).
Some general lifestyle changes that can help you lower your cholesterol include:
- Eat heart healthy foods low in saturated and trans fats, increasing fiber, and eating foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids.
- Swap food choices that contribute to weight gain like choosing water over sugary drinks or eating lower calorie snacks as opposed to candies or chips when you’re craving a snack.
- Increase physical activity to most days of the week.
- Quit smoking.
- If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation.
How can a group medical visit help?
Lowering your cholesterol can feel like a daunting challenge, especially when it comes to lifestyle changes. Changing your diet and exercise can be hard and you may not know where to start or which lifestyle changes are realistic for you. Learning about your diagnosis alongside others can help you find out what changes are right for you and try out some you hadn’t considered before.
Group Medical visits offer people an additional resource to help manage their conditions with the support of medical providers, dietitians, and mental health experts, as well as the lived experiences of other patients.