With America as whole largely (no pun intended) becoming more unhealthy, it is important for you as an individual to take charge of your own health. And more importantly so, take action in terms of preventative medicine. If you car about money you will care about this. Preventative health care is a huge money saver and is even becoming popular in the insurance business. Anyways back to the important stuff, lipid profiles. Lipid profiles are basically the amount of fat that you carry in your blood. So what, right? Well increased fat in the blood, especially bad cholesterol is a huge risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD).
Keep the following notes in mind when reading the next few paragraphs. The reason for using endurance athletes as the prime example for displaying the benefits of exercise on lipid profiles is to demonstrate that the benefits reaped from exercise for lipid profiles are almost exclusively related to AEROBIC exercise. Also, it will be beneficial to mention the difference of LDL and HDL cholesterol so that you have a better understanding of why one is bad and why one is good. LDL, the bad cholesterol, is responsible for delivering cholesterol to peripheral tissues that need it to synthesize steroid hormones. However, the problem with LDL is that it is not very selective as to which tissue it takes this cholesterol to. This is a problem because it can dump the cholesterol basically wherever it wants, that being the arteries or things like that. HDL on the other hand, is the good cholesterol. HDL is responsible for picking up cholesterol from the peripheral tissues and transport it back to the liver so the liver can get rid of it.
Endurance trained athletes have lower total cholesterol and lower LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) than the average person. However, this is probably largely due to body composition (low body fat) and /or eating habits of these athletes rather than the actually exercise itself. These athletes also have lower blood triglycerides (fat in the blood). This is due to the fact that exercise is directly related to the increased enzymatic activity of lipoprotein lipase (LPL) which is responsible for the initiation steps of muscle cells to take up fatty acids. It is important to note that when it comes to exercise and lipid profiles there are two types of people. There are the responders and the non-responders. That being said, some people's lipid profiles show remarkable improvement with the implementation of a structured exercise regime, however, there are also those people, who no matter how much they exercise, their lipid profiles will remain unchanged.
The amount and type of exercise that is needed in attempts to change lipid profiles for the better is solely dependent on duration and volume as opposed to intensity. To see improved lipid values, exercise should be performed for a minimum of 12 weeks with caloric expenditure due to exercise totals 1200-2200 kcals per week. Triglyceride changes should be expected to be within the 5-38mg/dL range and the HDL changes should be expected to be within the 2-8mg/dL range. The range for HDL changes seems rather low. However, it is important to note that a 1mg/dL increase in HDL or a 1mg/dL increase in LDL can decrease or increase, respectively ones risk of CHD by 2-3%. That being said, the range of 2-8mg/dL change in HDL that exercise offers, potentially allows oneself to decrease his/her risk of CHD by 4%-24% which is truly incredible!
While this blog was simple and short, I hope it gives you a little more insight into how exercise can help you to better your lipid profiles, and how bettering your lipid profiles can greatly decrease your risk of CHD!
