Increasing your "good" HDL cholesterol is as important to heart health as trying to lower "bad" LDL cholesterol that can slowly build up in key arteries.

Medical experts say that HDL helps carry cholesterol away from the arteries and back to the liver, where it's passed from the body. In general, protective HDL levels are defined as more than 40 mg/dL for men and 50 for women.

Cardiology professors at Johns Hopkins offer the following lifestyle strategies to boost HDL:

• Brisk aerobic exercise for 30 minutes at least several days a week.

• Quitting smoking increases HDL by an average of 4 mg/dL.

• Losing excess weight raises HDL by 0.35 mg/dL for every 2.2 pounds lost.

• For people not troubled by liver or addiction problems, one or two alcoholic drinks a day increases HDL by 4 mg/dL.

• Consuming less saturated fat and processed carbohydrates and more polyunsaturated fats such as olive oil, flaxseed, walnuts, almonds, pecans, peanuts and cold-water fish (tuna, salmon).

A combination of high-dose niacin and low-dose statins raises HDL 21 to 26 percent, they reported. Other drug therapies to raise HDL cholesterol include niacin (20 to 35 percent), fibrates (10 to 25 percent), and statins alone (2 to 15 percent).