Healthy lifestyle behaviour may improve cholesterol profiles
By Combining healthy lifestyle interventions reduces heart disease through beneficial effects on different lipoproteins and associated cholesterols, a new study suggests.
The study, published in the journal eLife, indicated that combining cholesterol-lowering medications and lifestyle interventions may yield the greatest benefits to heart health.
“Until now, no studies have compared the lipid-lowering effects of cholesterol-lowering medications and healthy lifestyle interventions side by side,” said lead author Jiahui Si, from Harvard University in the US.
Cholesterol-lowering medications such as statins help reduce heart risks by lowering levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the so-called “bad” cholesterol.
Healthy lifestyle interventions, including exercising regularly, having a healthy diet, lowering alcohol consumption and maintaining a healthy weight, have also been shown to lower LDL as well as increase “healthy” high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol.