American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 38, 825-834, Copyright © 1983 by The American Society for Clinical Nutrition, Inc

ORIGINAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS

Effects of short-term aerobic conditioning and high cholesterol feeding on plasma total and lipoprotein cholesterol levels in sedentary young men

DW Quig, FW Thye, SJ Ritchey, WG Herbert, BA Clevidence, LK Reynolds and MC Smith

The plasma total cholesterol (TC) and lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations of sedentary young men (n = 23) were determined during 4 wk of controlled feeding and 6 wk of supervised aerobic conditioning. Subjects were assigned to dietary treatments of 400 mg cholesterol per day (M) or 1400 mg cholesterol per day (H); both diets had a P/S ratio of about 0.6. Dietary groups M and H were subdivided into exercise (MX and HX) and sedentary (MS and HS) groups. Compared to the sedentary groups, MX and HX exhibited significant (p less than 0.01) improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness. After 2 and 4 wk of high cholesterol feeding, group HS exhibited significant (p less than 0.05) elevations in TC (+30 +/- 7 and +32 +/- 9 mg/dl) with nonsignificant increases in very low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Group HX exhibited consistent weekly increases in high- density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) (from 46 +/- 3 mg/dl, the base level, to 53 +/- 4 mg/dl at wk 4) with aerobic conditioning. By combining exercise and sedentary group data at each level of dietary cholesterol it was shown that TC and HDL-C levels significantly (p less than 0.05) increased by the 4th wk of high cholesterol feeding. The TC/HDL-C ratio significantly (p less than 0.05) increased for the sedentary subjects as compared to all the exercising subjects by wk 4 of controlled feeding.