Your blood cholesterol level, especially the level of LDL in your blood, is affected by several risk factors (part of them controllable and part of them not) and not only by your diet. These risk factors determine the way your body produces and discharges the bad LDL cholesterol and the quickness of the process.

Becoming aware of these risk factors and actually taking the necessary steps to neutralize the elements that can be controlled can bring dramatic results to most individuals suffering from high blood cholesterol levels. In many cases these changes can actually prevent a stroke and even save a life.

Basically, there are three groups of risk factors determining your cholesterol blood levels: the controllable factors (diet, smoking, weight, exercise), the partly controllable factors (environmental, stress) and the uncontrollable factors (medical diseases, age, gender, genetics). By accepting the unfortunate fact that your condition results from either of the non-controllable factors and doing everything within your power to eliminate the controllable factors, you can easily and naturally win the war against high blood cholesterol, even if you are one of the unlucky ones who’s LDL is mostly hereditary.

Genetics
Researches have clearly shown that if any of your family members (father, mother, grandfather, grandmother) had high LDL levels in the blood, than it’s most likely that you too will suffer from high LDL levels in your blood due to the uncontrollable hereditary factor. It has been proven that your genes have a significant affect on how quickly your LDL is expelled from your blood, thus have a clear influence on your LDL levels.

Diet
It has been studied and proven that saturated fat (the fat found in animal foods) and animal cholesterol are the two food groups directly contributing to elevated LDL levels in your blood. By reducing the amounts of animal cholesterol and saturated fat from your diet combined with the right nutritional supplementation can lead to dramatic reduction in cholesterol levels. Alcohol should also be consumed in moderation or not be consumed at all since although it raises HDL levels, it does not lower LDL. Alcohol can, however, damage the liver lead to high blood pressure, and raise triglycerides.

Age and Gender
Age and gender are yet another uncontrollable factors scientifically proven to play a role in elevated LDL levels. Children have the same potential risk of having high blood cholesterol although the impact of these levels is not the same as with adults. If you had high LDL levels as a teenager, the risk of suffering from the dangerous consequences of high LDL are greater as an adult. Before the age of 50 (time of menopause), women usually have lower cholesterol levels than those of men at the same age. As women pas the age of 50, their blood cholesterol levels rise and the risk becomes potentially the same as that of men, until about 65 years of age. Male and females above 70 years of age should be aware of their cholesterol levels in the same way as youngsters.

Medical diseases
Type 2 diabetes, hypothyroidism and metabolic syndrome (a disease characterized by resistance to insulin and high levels of cholesterol), have all been found to directly or indirectly lead to high LDL levels in the blood.

Weight, exercise and stress
All of the above controllable factors have been linked to high levels of cholesterol in the blood. Overweight people have been found to have high levels of LDL in their blood, and losing weight seems to reduce not only the percentage of fat in your body but only the levels of bad cholesterol, to raise HDL (”good”) cholesterol levels and to lower triglycerides. Physical activity can also Reduce the bad cholesterol and raise the good HDL cholesterol. Controlling stress, be that environmental or emotional psychological stress through optimized stress reduction methods such as Yoga, breathing, meditation and exercise has been proven to significantly lower the LDL levels and raising HDL. Whereas, living in a constant state of stress can certainly put you in a risk of having high blood cholesterol levels.