Health Topic

How to Lower Cholesterol

High cholesterol raises your risk of heart diseases. Treatments to lower cholesterol include lifestyle changes like diet and exercise, and medicines if needed.

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Important: This page is general information, not medical advice. It does not recommend or prescribe any treatment. Always consult your doctor or pharmacist before starting, stopping or changing any medicine.

About How to Lower Cholesterol

Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance that's found in all the cells in your body. Your body needs some cholesterol to work properly. But if you have too much of it in your blood, it can stick to the walls of your arteries and narrow or even block them. This puts you at risk for coronary artery disease and other heart diseases.

Cholesterol is made by your liver. It travels through the blood on proteins called lipoproteins. One type of lipoprotein, LDL, is sometimes called the "bad" cholesterol. A high LDL level leads to a buildup of cholesterol in your arteries. Another type, HDL, is sometimes called the "good" cholesterol. It carries cholesterol from other parts of your body back to your liver. Then your liver removes the cholesterol from your body.

There are steps that you can take to lower your LDL (bad) cholesterol and raise your HDL (good) cholesterol. By keeping your cholesterol levels in range, you can lower your risk of heart diseases.

The main treatments for high cholesterol are lifestyle changes and medicines.

Heart-healthy lifestyle changes that can help you lower or control your cholesterol include:

  • Heart-healthy eating. A heart-healthy eating plan limits the amount of saturated and trans fats that you eat. It recommends that you eat and drink only enough calories to stay at a healthy weight and avoid weight gain. It also encourages you to choose a variety of nutritious foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats. Examples of eating plans that can lower your cholesterol include the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes diet and the DASH eating plan.
  • Aiming for a healthy weight. If you are overweight or have obesity, losing weight can help lower your LDL cholesterol and raise your HDL cholesterol. This is especially important for people with metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a group of conditions that together raise your risk of heart diseases and other health problems.
  • Getting regular physical activity. Studies have shown that physical activity can lower LDL cholesterol and triglycerides and raise your HDL cholesterol. Before you start an exercise program, ask your health care provider what level of physical activity is right for you.
  • Managing stress. Research has shown that chronic stress can sometimes raise your LDL cholesterol and lower your HDL cholesterol.
  • Quitting smoking. Quitting smoking can raise your HDL cholesterol. Since HDL helps to remove LDL cholesterol from your arteries, having more HDL can help to lower your LDL cholesterol.
  • Getting enough good-quality sleep. Getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night lowers your risk of high LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol levels.

For some people, making lifestyle changes alone does not their lower cholesterol enough. They may also need to take cholesterol medicines. There are several types. They work in different ways and can have different side effects. If your provider recommends that you take cholesterol medicines, ask them which medicine would be right for you.

Even if you take medicines to lower your cholesterol, you still need to continue with lifestyle changes.

Some other possible treatments for high cholesterol may include:

Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is an inherited condition that causes very high levels of cholesterol in the blood. Some people who have FH may get a treatment called lipoprotein apheresis. This treatment uses a filtering machine to remove LDL cholesterol from your blood. Then the machine returns the rest of your blood back to your body.

Many companies sell supplements that they say can lower cholesterol. For many of these supplements, there isn't enough evidence to show that they can lower cholesterol levels. But for some supplements, research has found that they have cholesterol-lowering effects. For example:

  • Plant stanols and sterols supplements, when taken with meals, can reduce cholesterol levels.
  • Some soy products have a small cholesterol-lowering effect. But research has found that eating soy foods gives you more of a benefit than taking supplements.
  • Whole flaxseed and flaxseed lignans may help to lower cholesterol levels. However, flaxseed oil does not.
  • Garlic supplements may lower cholesterol levels, but the effect is small when compared to the effects of cholesterol medicines.

Supplements may cause side effects and interactions with medicines. Always check with your provider before you take any supplements.

It sits within Blood, Heart and Circulation and Food and Nutrition.

The lead U.S. institute for this subject is the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

When to speak to someone. Reading about a topic cannot tell you whether it applies to you. Speak to a doctor or pharmacist if symptoms are severe, sudden, getting worse, or simply not going away — and seek emergency care immediately for chest pain, breathing difficulty, sudden weakness or confusion, or a serious allergic reaction.

Research on How to Lower Cholesterol

1 study isregistered for this condition on ClinicalTrials.gov, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's public registry. A selection is below — the links go straight to the registry entry, not to a summary of ours.

What a registered study does and does not mean. Registration means a study exists and has been declared publicly. It says nothing about whether the treatment being tested works, is safe, or is available to you. Many studies find no benefit — that is what research is for. Never seek out an experimental treatment on the strength of a registry entry alone.

Research already completed

Study data from ClinicalTrials.gov, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved 2026-07-30. Registry entries are supplied by study sponsors and investigators; ClinicalTrials.gov does not verify their scientific validity. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH.

Where to read more

Rather than paraphrase, we point you to the primary sources. Every link below is to a government health agency, a national institute or a recognised medical body — grouped by what you are trying to find out.

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Clinical Trials

Medical subject headings

Clinicians and researchers index this subject under Hypercholesterolemia, Hypercholesterolemia. These are the terms to use when searching medical literature.

This page is built from the MedlinePlus health topic record for How to Lower Cholesterol, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health. Information is from MedlinePlus.gov. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and is not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH. Retrieved 30 July 2026.