Boosting your HDL’s (& protecting your heart)….
Welcome to our health & self help blog.
Focus on Your Health:
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
Today's post: Thursday, 11-9-2006
Boosting your HDL’s (& protecting your heart)….
Here’s our overview of our posts on boosting HDL’s.
For those of you who are as yet unfamiliar with HDL cholesterol & why it’s protective & relatively high levels are desirable, here’s some background.
Unless too much of your HDL cholesterol has been oxidized, HDL cholesterol, particularly one fraction of it, acts like janitors or garbage men in your blood vessels & apparently removes excess cellular debris, LDL cholesterol, & possibly even plaque, from your arteries & keeps them clean & free flowing.
People with unusually high HDL levels tend to be long lived. People with low levels tend to develop cardiovascular disease & heart attacks.
And, researchers are now reporting that making sure your HDL cholesterol is high may be considerably MORE important for protecting your health than making sure your LDL cholesterol & total cholesterol is low. (It’s still important to keep your small particle LDL; total LDL; & oxidized LDL low.)
Two things seem to be operating here: 1. Your blood vessels can stay healthy with a lot of garbage in them if you have enough of the HDL garbage men to remove it promptly.
And, 2. Many of the things that keep your HDL’s high keep you healthy in other ways also. So, your HDL level is also a reading of whether or not you are doing enough of those things.
Exercise is the number one most important thing you can do to boost your HDL levels because it doesn’t just boost the total HDL level but boosts the most protective fraction of your HDL that keeps your arteries clean.
And, exercise also has a multitude of other health benefits in addition. Many of those, like preventing or reducing insulin resistance, are also protective of your heart.
Our previous posts, which list many of the things that have worked for other people to boost their HDL levels, appeared on: Friday, 8-11-2006; Thursday, 9-28-2006; Tuesday, 10-3-2006; Thursday, 10-5-2006; & Wednesday, 11-1-2006. And, you can access them from my blog now if you like.
Today, I’m going to go over some added information & ideas on boosting your HDL’s with exercise.
1. Peter Wood, PhD studied the effect of running, at Stanford University on the HDL levels of runners & found that those who ran 12 to 15 miles a week or more got more of an increase of their HDL levels & had higher levels.
So, at least at a high moderate level of exertion, more exercise & exercise above 1000 to 1500 calories a week or more tended to be more effective at boosting HDL cholesterol than less exercise than that was.
2. Consistent with that, separate studies have found that while 500 calories a week of exercise gives you 40 percent of the health benefits of an ideal amount of exercise compared with doing none at all, the ideal amount of exercise for good health is between 2100 & 4200 calories a week with about 3500 being the ideal or sweet spot with slightly more being more effective than slightly less.
3. I haven’t seen a study on it but I suspect very strongly that exercise at greater intensity boosts your protective HDL’s far more then low intensity exercise.
Studies have been done that show that people who exercise at high moderate intensity have the best health. People who exercise at moderate intensity have slightly less good health. People who exercise at low intensity even less. And, people who do no exercise at all have by far the worst health.
Additionally, I’ve heard reports that relatively short sessions of moderately high or slightly higher intensity exercise strip off excess fat better than low intensity exercise of much longer duration.
That kind of exercise has been shown to get you in good shape & aerobically fit better than less intense exercise does.
Dr Al Sears also suggests that such exercise better develops the reserve capacity of your heart & lungs.
In that I think he is correct.
(The studies I’ve seen show that his other theory that longer duration cardio or aerobic exercise is harmful is incorrect. It IS less effective & boosts your health less however. He’s quite correct about that.)
In our next post I’ll cover how to do more intense exercise in ways that are likely to do you more good than harm.
There are some risks to avoid. But there are effective ways to do that.
***********
Some of you may be new to exercise or you may need some ideas to help you make more & better progress with your exercise goals.
Or, if you need inspiration or some ideas on an exercise plan that fits you, here’s a resource that many have found to work well:
Exercise expert Jon Benson has co-authored an ebook that has some guidelines on how to get good results from exercise.
But, here’s the exciting thing about his book:
He also has tons of people of both sexes & many ages who got well -- & discarded excess fat – by exercising -- tell their stories of how they got into exercise & what exactly they do in their exercise programs. It also has their very good results. Some got incredibly good results.
There are enough role models & ideas you are virtually certain to find one or several that are enough similar to you that you can do it too & see exactly how people who are like you & started where you are or maybe even at a worse level were able to do it.
Does that sound like it’s worth checking out?
If so, here’s more information on Jon’s book. See: http://www.fitover40.com/aff/iehealth
Focus on Your Health:
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
Today's post: Thursday, 11-9-2006
Boosting your HDL’s (& protecting your heart)….
Here’s our overview of our posts on boosting HDL’s.
For those of you who are as yet unfamiliar with HDL cholesterol & why it’s protective & relatively high levels are desirable, here’s some background.
Unless too much of your HDL cholesterol has been oxidized, HDL cholesterol, particularly one fraction of it, acts like janitors or garbage men in your blood vessels & apparently removes excess cellular debris, LDL cholesterol, & possibly even plaque, from your arteries & keeps them clean & free flowing.
People with unusually high HDL levels tend to be long lived. People with low levels tend to develop cardiovascular disease & heart attacks.
And, researchers are now reporting that making sure your HDL cholesterol is high may be considerably MORE important for protecting your health than making sure your LDL cholesterol & total cholesterol is low. (It’s still important to keep your small particle LDL; total LDL; & oxidized LDL low.)
Two things seem to be operating here: 1. Your blood vessels can stay healthy with a lot of garbage in them if you have enough of the HDL garbage men to remove it promptly.
And, 2. Many of the things that keep your HDL’s high keep you healthy in other ways also. So, your HDL level is also a reading of whether or not you are doing enough of those things.
Exercise is the number one most important thing you can do to boost your HDL levels because it doesn’t just boost the total HDL level but boosts the most protective fraction of your HDL that keeps your arteries clean.
And, exercise also has a multitude of other health benefits in addition. Many of those, like preventing or reducing insulin resistance, are also protective of your heart.
Our previous posts, which list many of the things that have worked for other people to boost their HDL levels, appeared on: Friday, 8-11-2006; Thursday, 9-28-2006; Tuesday, 10-3-2006; Thursday, 10-5-2006; & Wednesday, 11-1-2006. And, you can access them from my blog now if you like.
Today, I’m going to go over some added information & ideas on boosting your HDL’s with exercise.
1. Peter Wood, PhD studied the effect of running, at Stanford University on the HDL levels of runners & found that those who ran 12 to 15 miles a week or more got more of an increase of their HDL levels & had higher levels.
So, at least at a high moderate level of exertion, more exercise & exercise above 1000 to 1500 calories a week or more tended to be more effective at boosting HDL cholesterol than less exercise than that was.
2. Consistent with that, separate studies have found that while 500 calories a week of exercise gives you 40 percent of the health benefits of an ideal amount of exercise compared with doing none at all, the ideal amount of exercise for good health is between 2100 & 4200 calories a week with about 3500 being the ideal or sweet spot with slightly more being more effective than slightly less.
3. I haven’t seen a study on it but I suspect very strongly that exercise at greater intensity boosts your protective HDL’s far more then low intensity exercise.
Studies have been done that show that people who exercise at high moderate intensity have the best health. People who exercise at moderate intensity have slightly less good health. People who exercise at low intensity even less. And, people who do no exercise at all have by far the worst health.
Additionally, I’ve heard reports that relatively short sessions of moderately high or slightly higher intensity exercise strip off excess fat better than low intensity exercise of much longer duration.
That kind of exercise has been shown to get you in good shape & aerobically fit better than less intense exercise does.
Dr Al Sears also suggests that such exercise better develops the reserve capacity of your heart & lungs.
In that I think he is correct.
(The studies I’ve seen show that his other theory that longer duration cardio or aerobic exercise is harmful is incorrect. It IS less effective & boosts your health less however. He’s quite correct about that.)
In our next post I’ll cover how to do more intense exercise in ways that are likely to do you more good than harm.
There are some risks to avoid. But there are effective ways to do that.
***********
Some of you may be new to exercise or you may need some ideas to help you make more & better progress with your exercise goals.
Or, if you need inspiration or some ideas on an exercise plan that fits you, here’s a resource that many have found to work well:
Exercise expert Jon Benson has co-authored an ebook that has some guidelines on how to get good results from exercise.
But, here’s the exciting thing about his book:
He also has tons of people of both sexes & many ages who got well -- & discarded excess fat – by exercising -- tell their stories of how they got into exercise & what exactly they do in their exercise programs. It also has their very good results. Some got incredibly good results.
There are enough role models & ideas you are virtually certain to find one or several that are enough similar to you that you can do it too & see exactly how people who are like you & started where you are or maybe even at a worse level were able to do it.
Does that sound like it’s worth checking out?
If so, here’s more information on Jon’s book. See: http://www.fitover40.com/aff/iehealth
posted by David at 1:29 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home