so you've recently been diagnosed with low hdl cholesterol and you were just wishing that there were five easy steps that you could take to raise your hdl back up to normal well congratulations there are they're also delicious tasty and nutritious i'm dr ken berry a family physician and in this video i'm going to tell you five simple steps to get that hdl cholesterol back up to that high healthy level that you've been craving there's been lots of debate in the cholesterol world lately you may have noticed this but what i it's very important for you
to understand is that having a high hdl cholesterol is far more protective than having a high alveolar cholesterol is dangerous most of the research seems to show that a high hdl cholesterol is 10 times more important than having a low ldl cholesterol so stop worrying so much about your ldl cholesterol and focus on raising your hdl cholesterol there's a lot of false advice out there on the internet about how to raise your hdl cholesterol most of it's given by well-intentioned earnest people gurus practitioners who believe in their heart of hearts that a plant-based diet is
the healthiest diet for human beings to eat the problem is these false recommendations this false advice which includes eating more whole grains eating more soybeans eating more apples eating more wild yams beans flaxseed drink more red wine when you start looking at the research behind these things it's trivial at best epidemiological at worst all of these things are very high carbohydrate foods and therefore they're going to fly directly in the face of evidence supported tip number one step number one to raising your hdl cholesterol is to eat a low carbohydrate diet so some authorities would
say it needs to be under 50 total grams of carbohydrates today other would say it needs to be under 20 total grams of carbohydrates a day regardless of who's right there the truth of the matter is supported supported by much meaningful research is that eating a low carbohydrate diet is going to raise your hdl cholesterol indeed some of the same research some of which is even randomized and controlled shows that eating a high carb diet is without fail going to lower your healthy good hdl cholesterol step number two is to eat a higher fat diet
and it can't just be any fat you don't want to be guzzling polyunsaturated fat rich canola oil soybean oil peanut oil sunflower oil these are not going to help you they're going to cause inflammation and oxidation and not raise your hdl cholesterol no you want to focus on getting lots of good healthy saturated fat and also mono unsaturated fat so great sources of this that you can add to your diet in portions as big as you want them to be is butter bacon full fat real fermented cheese cod liver and lard and basically any red
meat is going to be a great source of saturated fat and monounsaturated fat both of which are going to help you raise your hdl cholesterol step number three for raising your hdl cholesterol is to incorporate some form of vigorous exercise into your weekly routine uh there's still debate on how often this should be probably three times a week is sufficient but if you want to go to five times a week i think that's also fine but the research shows that this needs to be vigorous so going for a walk walking on the treadmill these sorts
of things are probably not going to do it the exercise needs to get you winded get you short of breath so lifting heavy weights doing high intensity interval training these sorts of things that get you sweaty and out of breath it can even be exercise in the bedroom as long as you get sweaty and out of breath that's gonna raise your hdl cholesterol step number four to raise your hdl cholesterol is to get somewhere between seven and nine hours of sleep a night too little sleep seems to lower your hdl too much sleep also seems
to lower your hdl so it looks like between seven hours a night and nine hours a night is the sweet spot that's going to raise your hdl a little bit next is if you're a smoker you 100 need to quit smoking the research is very clear about this when you quit smoking you're going to raise your hdl cholesterol but if you're like well can i vape instead of smoke uh yes yes you can there's actually a study that shows that if you switch from smoking cigarettes to vaping you still get the benefit of raising your
hdl cholesterol now i don't think that vaping is 100 safe and 100 healthy but i do think it's 100 times better for you than smoking cigarettes smoking cigarettes is just as dumb as not subscribing to this channel and finally if you're just starting to try to raise your hdl and your hdl is currently very very low there is a supplement that has some research supporting its ability to raise your hdl and that's berberine i'm going to put a link down in the show notes to a good quality berberine that you can take for one to
six months while you're focusing on the five easy steps that are going to permanently raise your hdl back up to normal you can use the berberine as a temporary crutch until you fix this problem yourself now i know some of the things that i've said in this video may sound like crazy blasphemy to you and that's why i've included multiple research links to each of the steps down in the show notes below so that if you don't believe me or if your doctor doesn't believe me they can look it up and read it for themselves
your ultimate goal here is to wind up with an hdl cholesterol of 60 milligrams per deciliter or higher if it's any less than that then you're at a little bit increased risk for heart attack and stroke and the more it is below that 60 cut off level the higher your risk of heart attack and stroke a lot of people don't know this information including a lot of doctors and so please consider sharing this video to help me teach the whole world how to raise their hdl cholesterol in five easy steps this is dr barry i'll
see you next time
