Lower High Cholesterol

Recently, The New York Times published an article entitled – “U.S. calls for major cholesterol reductions.” The same article was printed in numerous papers around the country.  But what if you could lower high cholesterol with just a few changes to your diet and a little exercise.

Sounds like a great way to fight heart disease, right ?  So let’s look at what it takes to lower high cholesterol.  Because you already understand what occurs when we artificially lower cholesterol levels without any strategies we won’t spend our time viewing these.

Framingham Heart study followed people for around 5 decades which proved that LDL is one of the many factors of heart disease.  In fact it showed that LDL is actually only a small factor in heart disease.

Christie Ballantyne, M.D., a cardiologist from the Baylor College of Medicine said that “The majority of people who end up having heart attacks or stroke don’t have high cholesterol.”

Malcolm Kendrick, M.D. who talks about the Framingham Study results as published in the Journal of the American Medical Association said “here is a direct association between falling cholesterol levels over the first 14 years and mortality over the following 18 years.”   Mortality goes up.

Here’s something that just might scare you.  Scientific studies have proven that as individuals lower their LDL cholesterol level, their chances for stroke go up.

Using cholesterol lowering drugs like Lipitor artificially lower cholesterol levels, but it also increases the death rate from stroke. These statin drugs are known to be toxic to the body, you will also face liver and kidney failure.

Your body not only produces cholesterol, it also needs cholesterol for a variety of functions. In fact cholesterol is essential to every cell membrane. It provides the starting point and building block for the steroid hormones in our bodies which includes the hormones testosterone and estrogen.

So you see not all cholesterol is bad.  What is bad is the oxidation of cholesterol which is one of the factors of developing heart disease.

Oxidation enables the cholesterol to become sticky and then it begins to form plaque in the walls of the arteries.

The way to keep oxidation from damaging your cholesterol is to zap them with antioxidants!  You can eat plenty of food and supplements which are rich in anti-oxidants.  Choose anti-oxidants like CoenzymeQ10, Vitamin E, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and Alpha-lipoic acid or ALA which is naturally produced by your body but, as you age the amount goes down significantly.

There are many affordable food sources so you can easily get the omega 3's and the right fats to keep your cholesterol levels in balance. You should also eat lots of Garlic, Ginger, Olive oil, Olives, Almonds, Walnuts, Flaxseed, Eggplant, Okra, Organic Eggs, and Fresh fruit all of which are easy to purchase, affordable, and a great way to prevent cholesterol from becoming a problem.

And if you really need to lower high cholesterol, the organic plant alcohol from sugar cane, Policosanol, is one of the most powerful ways to reduce bad cholesterol levels.

You can also spend time raising your HDL cholesterol levels which will improve your ratio between good and bad. Some of the best ways to improve your “Good” or HDL cholesterol is with exercise as well as Vitamin D, and Niacin. 

When you lower high cholesterol you increase your heart health.  So what are you waiting for ?