High Cholesterol Treatment -- What Works?

If you've just been diagnosed with high cholesterol, you may be worried. After all, along with your age, genes, and other factors, high cholesterol is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease, heart attack, and stroke. But while you can't turn back the clock or yank out unhealthy genes from your DNA, you can change your cholesterol numbers. That's because high cholesterol treatment works.

"We have good, safe treatments for high cholesterol," says Adolph Hutter, MD, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "They can directly lower your risks of heart attack, stroke, and death. So why not take advantage of them?"

For many people, making changes to their lifestyle -- eating better, losing weight, and exercising -- will be enough to lower cholesterol. Others may benefit from medicines. Often, a combination of these approaches is the right choice.

But where do you start? "People tend to be very confused about treating high cholesterol," says Nathan D. Wong, PhD, director of the heart disease prevention program at the University of California, Irvine.

WebMD talked to experts to help reduce the confusion -- and help you sort through your high cholesterol treatment options.

• Is it time to consider medication? Take this quiz for cholesterol-lowering tips.

Finding the Best High Cholesterol Treatment

There's a lot of variability in how high cholesterol treatments work in a given person. Treatment that did wonders for your spouse may do nothing for you. Some of it depends on your genes. You and your doctor will need to come up with a custom-tailored approach.

For most people, the first high cholesterol treatment to try is three lifestyle changes:

• Eating better
• Maintaining (or losing) weight
• Exercising more

Some people, if they already have other risk factors -- such as diabetes -- may immediately start medication as well.

While lifestyle changes can really help bring your cholesterol down, Wong says that not enough people give them a real chance.

"The problem is that both patients and their doctors like immediate results," he tells WebMD. "Lowering your cholesterol with exercise and diet is just not like that."

So try to give high cholesterol lifestyle treatments time to work. If they do, you can avoid the hassle of being on a daily medicine for the rest of your life.

Eating Right as a High Cholesterol Treatment

We've all heard that diet has an effect on cholesterol, but there's much confusion about what you should or shouldn't eat. Here's a rundown of the current evidence.

• Fat. If you have high cholesterol, you should cut down on saturated fat -- found in fatty meats and whole milk dairy products like cheese, ice cream, and butter. You also need to reduce your intake of trans fats, a man-made fat found in many processed foods, like stick margarine.
  
  But the message isn't as simple as "fat is bad." There are a number of foods with healthy unsaturated fats that will actually improve your cholesterol. They include fatty fish like tuna and salmon, walnuts, and almonds. Since even good fats are high in calories, you should still eat them in moderation.