Talk about a love-hate relationship. Your body needs cholesterol to make essential hormones, cell membranes, and brain and nerve tissues. To transport this fat through your bloodstream, your body turns cholesterol into good, high-density lipoproteins (HDLs), and bad, low-density lipoproteins (LDLs). HDLs get rid of excess cholesterol, and LDLs promote fatty buildup in your arteries.

According to Dr. Kenneth Ford, with The Heart Group, your liver manufactures all the cholesterol your body needs. “The cholesterol from your diet is all excess,” says Dr. Ford. “High blood levels of cholesterol can clog blood vessels and cause heart disease, America’s number one killer.”

Dr. Ford says that an individual’s cholesterol profile results partly from heredity and age. “But physical activity and diet count, too,” adds Dr. Ford. He suggests the following lifestyle choices to help lower your total cholesterol and LDL levels, and raise your HDL levels:

• Compare labels and choose foods with less cholesterol and saturated fat. Saturated fat is an even worse culprit than dietary cholesterol in raising blood cholesterol levels. Only eight to 10 percent of your diet should be saturated fat.
• If you are overweight, your diet should consist mainly of fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains. Choose lean cuts of meat with the fat trimmed. If you are not overweight, you may add monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil, canola oil, avocados, and nuts to your diet.
• Choose a tub margarine with liquid vegetable oil as the first ingredient in place of butter or stick margarine. High levels of trans fatty acids in hydrogenated oils found in stick margarine, baked goods, fried foods, and snack foods lower healthy HDLs.
• Maintain a healthy weight. Excess weight can increase LDLs and lower HDLs.
• Exercise for at least 30 minutes on most days of the week. A recent study showed that exercising longer boosted HDL levels more than did exercising harder.