You are here:About>Health>Heart Disease
About.comHeart Disease
Newsletters & RSSEmail to a friendSubmit to Digg
Suggested Reading

Raising Your HDL Levels

Cranberry Juice Increases HDL

From Richard N. Fogoros, M.D.,
Your Guide to Heart Disease.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by our Medical Review Board

A cup a day keeps the cardiologist away?

By DrRich

At least a handful of small studies have suggested that consuming cranberry juice can increase HDL levels by up to 10%.

Most recently, a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition described the effect of cranberry juice consumption on 30 overweight men with modestly elevated LDL cholesterol levels. For 16 weeks, the men drank increasing amounts of a low-calorie cranberry juice cocktail(up to about 2 cups per day). At the end of this period, these individuals were found to have significantly increased their HDL levels by about 8%.

Researchers attributed the elevation in HDL levels to the flavenoids found in cranberry juice.

DrRich Comments:

Since cranberry juice is harmless, drinking the stuff seems like a reasonable idea for anyone looking to raise their HDL levels. If so, the peak effect on HDL in most of these studies has been seen with about 1 cup of cranberry juice per day - the low calorie stuff, DrRich reminds you.

So, go ahead and drink cranberry juice, but the mainstay of raising HDL levels is still weight loss and exercise.

Sources

Ruel G, Pomerleau S, Lemieux S, Lamarche B, Couillard C. Favourable impact of low-calorie cranberry juice consumption on plasma HDL-cholesterol concentrations in men. Br J Nutr. 2006 Aug;96(2):357-64.

Updated: November 26, 2006
Suggested Reading

Raising Your HDL Levels

About.com is accredited by the Health On the Net Foundation, which promotes reliable and trusted online health information.
 All Topics | Email Article | | |
Advertising Info | News & Events | Work at About | SiteMap | Reprints | HelpOur Story | Be a Guide
More from About, Inc.: Calorie Count Plus | UCompareHealthCare
User Agreement | Ethics Policy | Patent Info. | Corrections | Privacy Policy
©2008 About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.