High Cholesterol

BACKGROUND

It's important to recognize that even though cholesterol gets a lot of attention, it's not necessarily the most important (or even an especially significant) factor in preventing heart disease. Other factors, such as exercise, treating high blood pressure and diabetes, not smoking, healthy diet, nutritional support and optimizing thyroid function, may also decrease the risk of heart attack.

Although the cholesterol-lowering medications in use today can be lifesaving in those who have already had a heart attack or have angina, they only decrease heart attack deaths by 1.4% in those without a previous heart attack (called “primary prevention”), and they are not without risks. Some of these include muscle pain, liver inflammation, and depletion of the nutrient coenzyme Q10. This nutritional deficiency can then contribute to fatigue and congestive heart failure, and anybody on Mevacor family cholesterol-lowering medications (most are) should take 200 mg a day of coenzyme Q10.

To put that 1.4% benefit in perspective, let’s look at other research. Women whose thyroid blood tests show their thyroid function to be on the low vs. high side of normal were at a 69% increased risk of heart attack death. In another study, non cat owners were 30% more likely than cat owners to die of a heart attack. This makes owning a cat more than 20 times as effective as cholesterol medications for preventing heart attacks (which is the purpose of lowering cholesterol).

So why all the push for using cholesterol medicines? Could it be because they sell well over $10 billion worth yearly?

In the absence of underlying heart disease or if your cholesterol under 250, a good argument could be made to skip the cholesterol lowering medications.

TREATMENT

Diet and Exercise

Start an exercise program

Begin with an exercise program and, if overweight, bring your weight down.

Eggs

Enjoy eating your eggs and cholesterol — study after study shows that eating 6 eggs a day for 6 weeks has no effect on cholesterol blood levels. Yet this myth persists. Avoid saturated fats (hard fats) and margarine (butter is much healthier and tastier than margarine).

Garlic

Eat 1-3 cloves of garlic a day. Crushed into olive oil, it makes a yummy treat that may drop your cholesterol. In addition, have a cereal with oats for breakfast (e.g., Life, Cheerios, Quaker Oats Squares). Simply adding garlic and oats to your diet can lower your cholesterol almost as much as many medications.

Recommended Supplements

Herbals that reduce cholesterol

Herbals that reduce cholesterol can be quite effective at maintaining a healthy cholesterol level.

Coenzyme Q10

If on cholesterol lowering medications (statins), be sure to take Coenzyme Q10 (200 mg a day).

Acetyl-L-Carnitine

If triglycerides are also elevated, especially be sure to avoid sweets and add Acetyl-L-Carnitine 1,000 mg a day to the above for 3 months to see if it lowers the triglycerides.

Medications

Prescription natural testosterone

In men, especially those who are overweight, have high blood pressure, or have diabetes (or are prediabetic), this might ALL be coming from too low of a testosterone level. If your total testosterone is under 450 on the blood test, consider using prescription natural testosterone (Androgel or Testim or compounded) to bring your level up to over 700.

Armour Thyroid

In women, consider a trial of prescription natural Armour Thyroid — even if the labs are normal. High cholesterol is often caused by low thyroid and the tests are horribly unreliable (they miss the majority of those who need thyroid hormone).