MedWire News: People can increase their levels of high-density lipoprotein, or ‘good’ cholesterol, by exercising regularly, study results suggest.

High levels of good cholesterol are linked to a reduced risk of developing cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death worldwide, explain Dr Satoru Kodama, from Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, Japan, and team.

To investigate whether exercise affects a person’s levels of good cholesterol, the researchers assessed the results of 25 studies involving more than 1400 participants aged between 23 and 75 years.

The participants exercised, on average, 4 times a week for around 40 minutes and burned an average of 1,019 calories per week

Analysis showed that aerobic exercise was linked to an average 2.53 mg/dl increase in the participants’ levels of good cholesterol.

The minimum amount of weekly exercise required to increase levels of good cholesterol was 2 hours, or 900 calories burned.

Furthermore, only exercise duration, and not frequency or intensity, was associated with an increase in the participants’ levels of good cholesterol.

Indeed, when the participants exercised for 23 to 74 minutes per session, each 10-minute increase in exercise duration corresponded to a 1.4-mg/dl increase in good cholesterol.

"This suggests that in improving blood high-density lipoprotein values, increasing time per session is better than performing multiple brief exercise sessions when total time for exercise is limited, as is the case for many people," write the researchers in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

They conclude that their findings are “potentially of substantial importance in public health”.