What if hdl is high

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Other methods to raise HDL are not so healthy. For instance, medications or supplements, like niacin, have shown disappointing results in controlled studies. Alcohol intake is known to increase HDL, but consuming more than two standard drinks a day can raise your risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. As a service to our readers, Harvard Health Publishing provides access to our library of archived content.

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Thanks for visiting. Don't miss your FREE gift. Sign up to get tips for living a healthy lifestyle, with ways to fight inflammation and improve cognitive health , plus the latest advances in preventative medicine, diet and exercise , pain relief, blood pressure and cholesterol management, and more. Find out what the numbers mean. Try to adopt a healthy diet and lifestyle and manage any other health problems you have that can lead to heart disease. For example:. This is especially important for women leading up to, during and after the menopause.

There are no medications that specifically target high HDL cholesterol, so the main thing is to lower your risk of heart disease overall. We need more research to fully understand how HDL cholesterol works to develop ways to prevent and treat heart disease. This means studying how HDL lipoproteins work, and how this can be improved on, as simply raising the amount of HDL in the blood does not prevent disease.

By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Continue Find out more. How high is too high? Current recommendations for healthy levels of HDL cholesterol 1. Centers for Disease Control. Rosenson RS, et al. HDL-cholesterol: Clinical aspects of abnormal values. HDL cholesterol. Lab Tests Online. Ballantyne CM, ed. Therapeutic targeting of high-density lipoprotein metabolism.

Philadelphia, Pa. Madsen CM, et al. Extreme high high-density lipoprotein cholesterol is paradoxically associated with high mortality in men and women: Two prospective cohort studies. European Heart Journal. See also After a flood, are food and medicines safe to use? Arcus senilis: A sign of high cholesterol? Get moving Cholesterol concerns?

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