Welcome to the Ask a Nutritionist podcast, brought to you by Nutritional Weight and Wellness.

We are thrilled to have you join us today as we discuss the connection between what you eat and how you feel and share practical real-life solutions for healthier living through balanced nutrition.

Now let's get started.

Hello and welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition's

midweek segment called Ask a Nutritionist. I am Brittany Vincent, a registered and licensed

dietitian. On today's show brought to you by nutritional weight and wellness, I will be

answering a nutrition question we have received from one of our Dishing Up Nutrition listeners.

The question today is, what are some ways to increase good cholesterol? And the cholesterol that

this listener is referring to is our HDL cholesterol, which stands for high density lipoprotein. It is sometimes often referred to as good cholesterol.

And what it does in the body is it absorbs cholesterol in the blood and carries it back to the liver.

Then the liver flushes it out from our body. So high levels of HDL cholesterol can lower your risk for heart disease and stroke.

Optimally, really we want our HDL levels to be above 60. So I would peak at at what your levels were the last time

that you've had them checked. And I'm going to go through a list of ways that you can increase

this HDL cholesterol. And often by incorporating some of these things that I'm going to talk about,

it's going to improve other cholesterol markers as well. So the first thing would be choose

healthy fats and avoid refined oils. So healthy fats would be avocados, olives, olive oil, butter,

nuts, seeds, ideally raw or dry roasted. Those would all be the healthy fats. The refined oils

are the ones that you really want to avoid because those can be healthy fats. The refined oils are the ones that you really want to avoid because those can

reduce your HDL, whereas those healthy fats can actually improve your HDL cholesterol. The refined

oils would be soybean oil, canola, cotton seed, corn oil, anything that is not

naturally coming from an oily or fatty food. So you think of soybean or a kernel of corn

and you squeeze that, that or oil is not naturally

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