Why your cholesterol levels are rising even after dieting and exercise?
You had high cholesterol levels. You visited your doctor and he advised you to control your diet and do some exercises. After that, you followed your diet religiously and did your physical activities on time. You again got your cholesterol levels tested and voila it was even higher. Now, you are even more confused and worried. Why this is happening? What did I do wrong? What bad effect it will have on my health and many more questions like that.
I decided to make things clear like what could be the possible reasons for it. There could be many reasons why your cholesterol levels are rising even after adopting a healthy diet and regularly following the exercise regime. Some of them are as:
1. Familial Hypercholesterolemia.
Big scary word, isn’t it. Not just from your diet or lazy lifestyle but your high cholesterol levels can be due to a condition known as familial hypercholesterolemia.
Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is a genetic defect which affects the way your body metabolizes your Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. If you are suffering from this disease, then your cholesterol level will keep on rising despite doing diet and exercise. Normally cholesterol levels will rise with age but in this condition, your cholesterol level will always be high from a young age. If you are suffering from this disease then you are 20 times more likely to get a heart attack. You also become prone to a stroke or other peripheral vascular issues. In fact, it is one of the main causes of a heart attack in young individuals. Some young people may need bypass surgery.
You can get this disease from your parents. You should visit your doctor so that this condition can be detected as early as possible. It can be managed with a combination of diet, exercise and medicines (Cholesterol-lowering drugs).
2. Mobilization of adipose cholesterol stores.
There are different types of cholesterol carriers (lipoproteins) like LDL, HDL, VLDL, IDL etc. Their function is to carry lipids (fats) from liver to other body tissues and vice versa. When you rapidly lose weight, fat stores starts dissolving and their concentration in blood increases. Therefore to mobilize them, cholesterol concentration also increases. It is mainly seen when your tummy fat is reducing. When your rate of weight loss decreases, levels of cholesterol also decreases.
3. Increased production.
Your body needs cholesterol to perform various functions. Your dietary cholesterol intake reduces when you take a low-fat diet. To compensate that, your liver may produce more cholesterol which may result in a transient rise of cholesterol levels.
4. Good cholesterol or Bad Cholesterol.
You must have heard about good and bad cholesterol. LDL which carries fat from the liver to body tissues is known as Bad cholesterol. HDL which carries fat from body tissues to the liver for its metabolism is known as Good cholesterol. So you must check in your report which of the two cholesterol type is rising. If LDL is rising then that is bad news. Rise in HDL levels is not a major concern.
5. Suffering from other medical conditions.
There are many medical conditions which can raise your cholesterol levels like diabetes, liver diseases, kidney diseases, PCOD/PCOS and even low thyroid levels. If you are suffering from these conditions then you have to discuss with your doctor so your medicines can be adjusted accordingly.
6. Pregnancy.
Pregnancy is a hyper estrogenic condition. It means that the level of female sex hormones like estrogen is very high during pregnancy. High estrogen levels result in high cholesterol levels in the body. So if you think that you might be pregnant then it’s good to let your doctor know about it.
So these are some of the reasons which can explain why your cholesterol levels are rising even after dieting and exercise.
