Health ideas and ramblings from America's favorite nutritonal pharmacist Ben Fuchs, R.Ph.
Friday, December 2, 2011
More on Cholesterol and Hardening of the Arteries
Are you on a statin drug? Is your doctor obsessed with your HDL or LDL statistics? Are you concerned about heart disease. If you answered yes to any of the above you’re gonna want to read this post about cholesterol and the silliness around cholesterol-mania; this crazy idea that lowering cholesterol levels by poisoning the liver is somehow an appropriate strategy for reducing the risk of atherosclerosis and heart disease. Lowering cholesterol production in the liver pharmacologically is a biochemically ignorant health strategy. There are however, some very effective strategies, nutritional strategies that can very effectively reduce the risks of atherosclerosis that is hardening of the arteries. And by the way atherosclerosis doesn’t just cause heart problems. All the arteries in the body can become sclerotic, which simply means hardened. So sclerosis is clearly a health issue and the fact that cholesterol is present in the hardened patched inside the arteries is not evidence that cholesterol is the cause or that lowering cholesterol manufacturing in the liver is appropriate strategy. However there are some very effective nutritional strategies for reducing atherosclerosis and unlike the biochemical lunacy that is behind the use of the stating drugs, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, chromium, lowering blood sugar levels, lowering insulin. There are literally dozens of different ways you can keep your heart healthy without touching a drug, going to a doctor, needing health insurance help or any other mainstream medical technique we’re told we have to do. In the world of nutrition when we talk about some of these nutrients, one of the most important facets is this feature that supplements have that makes them useful in a whole variety of ways. You know Vitamin C helps with skin and insulin and the liver and the brain and the adrenal glands etc. Calcium for bones and blood pressure and the heart and the brain and perhaps no more nutrient is as significant as magnesium which in addition to being calcium’s partner and involved in over 300 different chemical reactions in the body is also one of the most common nutritional deficiencies. The bottom line is: If your doctor has “ordered” you to be on a statin on some other cholesterol lowering drug, you do have options, nutritional non-toxic alternative that you may want to consider.
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My endocrinologist has been trying to get me to take statins for 2 years now. And I won't.
ReplyDeleteThanks for confirming my belief that it is crazy to chemically interfere with the liver's normal work of producing most of the cholesterol our body needs, as well as the critically important Coenzyme Q-10 needed for energy production in every cell of our body.
ReplyDeleteLooked at objectively, the medical and pharmaceutical industries have positioned themselves as the facilitators of all our bad habits -- of diet, inactivity, and general lifestyle self-indulgence. What Americans, in particular, really need is to get more healthy exercise, a healthier diet of natural foods, and the full complement of nutrients via supplementation, and skip the statins and other "easy solutions" that are destroying our quality of life and emptying our bank accounts needlessly.