Lower Your Cholesterol Through High Impact Workouts

Your doctor has been telling you that you need to be careful about your high cholesterol levels, and you’ve finally decided to start taking him seriously.  It’s a good idea – High cholesterol can kill you if you don’t kill it first – here are some ways to use your workout time to fight it.

People suffering from high cholesterol should engage in low-impact exercises.  Low impact exercise means a workout with low levels of physical stress on your body, such as your feet pounding the pavement in a sprint.  A recent study of athletes in several different sports found that swimmers, on average, had the lowest cholesterol levels.  You don’t get much more low-impact than swimming!  If swimming is not your thing, you can try replacing your treadmill with an elliptical machine, which can also eliminate impact.  Any form of aerobic exercise is great for your body, as it both lowers your LDL levels, the “bad” cholesterol, and raises the HDL, which is the good stuff that your body needs.

If you’ve got high cholesterol or high blood pressure, you need to keep an eye on your heart rate while you work out.  A good workout is one that keeps your heart pumping between sixty to eighty percent of your maximum heart rate.  The longer you can keep your heart rate here for, the better.  The easiest way to figure out your target heart rate is to subtract your age from 220, and then multiply by 0.6 for the lower limit, and 0.8 for the higher.  For example, if you’re forty years old, then your maximum heart rate is 180, which puts your target range between 108 and 144 heartbeats per minute.

A solid aerobic routine is also proven to reduce blood pressure, and help keep your lungs and heart healthy.  Of course, there’s the added benefit of losing weight, and looking great!