The
Cholesterol Myth that is Harming Your Health
( Full information
about Cholesterol )
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By
Dr. Mercola : Cholesterol could easily be described as
the smoking gun of the last two decades.
It"s been responsible
for demonizing entire categories of foods (like eggs and
saturated fats) and blamed for just about every case of
heart disease in the last 20 years.
Yet when I first opened
my medical practice in the mid 80s, cholesterol, and the
fear that yours was too high was rarely talked about.
Somewhere along the way
however, cholesterol became a household word --
something that you must keep as low as possible, or
suffer the consequences.
You are probably aware
that there are many myths that portray fat and
cholesterol as one of the worst foods you can consume.
Please understand that these myths are actually harming
your health.
Not only is cholesterol
most likely not going to destroy your health
(as you have been led to believe), but it is also
not the cause of heart disease.
And for those of you
taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, the information that
follows could not have been given to you fast enough.
But before I delve into this life-changing information,
let"s get some basics down first.
What is Cholesterol, and
Why Do You Need It?
That"s right, you do
need cholesterol.
This soft, waxy
substance is found not only in your bloodstream, but
also in every cell in your body, where it helps to
produce cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile
acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also
helps in the formation of your memories and is vital for
neurological function.
Your liver makes about
75 percent of your body"s cholesterol,[i]
and according to conventional medicine, there are
two types:
-
High-density lipoprotein, or HDL: This is
the "good" cholesterol that helps to keep
cholesterol away from your arteries and remove any
excess from arterial plaque, which may help to
prevent heart disease.
- Low-density
lipoprotein, or LDL: This "bad" cholesterol
circulates in your blood and, according to
conventional thinking, may build up in your
arteries, forming plaque that makes your arteries
narrow and less flexible (a condition called
atherosclerosis). If a clot forms in one of these
narrowed arteries leading to your heart or brain, a
heart attack or stroke may result.
Also making up your
total cholesterol count are:
- Triglycerides:
Elevated levels of this dangerous fat have been
linked to heart disease and diabetes. Triglyceride
levels are known to rise from eating too many grains
and sugars, being physically inactive, smoking
cigarettes, drinking alcohol excessively and being
overweight or obese.
- Lipoprotein (a), or
Lp(a): Lp(a) is a substance that is made up of an
LDL "bad cholesterol" part plus a protein
(apoprotein a). Elevated Lp(a) levels are a very
strong risk factor for heart disease. This has been
well established, yet very few physicians check for
it in their patients.
Understand this:
Your Total Cholesterol
Level is NOT a Great Indicator of Your Heart Disease Risk
Health officials in the
United States urge everyone over the age of 20 to have
their cholesterol tested once every five years. Part of
this test is your total cholesterol, or the sum of your
blood"s cholesterol content, including HDL, LDLs, and
VLDLs..
The American Heart Association recommends that your
total cholesterol is less than 200 mg/dL, but what they
do not tell you is that total cholesterol level is just
about worthless in determining your risk for heart
disease, unless it is above 330.
In addition, the AHA
updated their guidelines in 2004, lowering the
recommended level of LDL cholesterol from 130 to LDL to
less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very
high risk.
In order to achieve
these outrageous and dangerously low targets, you
typically need to take multiple cholesterol-lowering
drugs. So the guidelines instantly increased the market
for these dangerous drugs. Now, with testing children"s
cholesterol levels, they"re increasing their market even
more.
I have seen a number of
people with total cholesterol levels over 250 who
actually were at low heart disease risk due to their HDL
levels. Conversely, I have seen even more who had
cholesterol levels under 200 that were at a very high
risk of heart disease based on the following additional
tests:
- HDL/Cholesterol
ratio
- Triglyceride/HDL
ratios
HDL percentage is a very
potent heart disease risk factor. Just divide your HDL
level by your cholesterol. That percentage should
ideally be above 24 percent.
You can also do the same
thing with your triglycerides and HDL ratio. That
percentage should be below 2.
Keep in mind, however,
that these are still simply guidelines, and
there"s a lot more that goes into your risk of heart
disease than any one of these numbers. In fact, it was
only after word got out that total cholesterol is a poor
predictor of heart disease that HDL and LDL cholesterol
were brought into the picture.
They give you a closer
idea of what"s going on, but they still do not show you
everything.
Cholesterol is Neither
"Good" Nor "Bad"
Now that we"ve defined
good and bad cholesterol, it has to be said that there
is actually only one type of
cholesterol. Ron Rosedale, MD, who is widely considered
to be one of the leading anti-aging doctor in the United
States, does an excellent job of explaining this
concept:[ii]
"Notice please
that LDL and HDL are lipoproteins -- fats combined
with proteins. There is only one cholesterol. There
is no such thing as "good" or "bad" cholesterol.
Cholesterol is
just cholesterol.
It combines with
other fats and proteins to be carried through the
bloodstream, since fat and our watery blood do not
mix very well.
Fatty substances
therefore must be shuttled to and from our tissues
and cells using proteins. LDL and HDL are forms of
proteins and are far from being just cholesterol.
In fact we now
know there are many types of these fat and protein
particles. LDL particles come in many sizes and
large LDL particles are not a problem. Only the
so-called small dense LDL particles can potentially
be a problem, because they can squeeze through the
lining of the arteries and if they oxidize,
otherwise known as turning rancid, they can cause
damage and inflammation.
Thus, you might
say that there is "good LDL" and "bad LDL."
Also, some HDL
particles are better than others. Knowing just your
total cholesterol tells you very little. Even
knowing your LDL and HDL levels will not tell you
very much."
Cholesterol is Your Friend,
Not Your Enemy
Before we continue, I
really would like you to get your mind around this
concept.
In the United States,
the idea that cholesterol is evil is very much engrained
in most people"s minds. But this is a very harmful myth
that needs to be put to rest right now.
"First and
foremost," Dr. Rosedale points out,
"cholesterol is a vital component of every cell
membrane on Earth. In other words, there is no life
on Earth that can live without cholesterol.
That will
automatically tell you that, in and of itself, it
cannot be evil. In fact, it is one of our best
friends.
We would not be
here without it. No wonder lowering cholesterol too
much increases one"s risk of dying. Cholesterol is
also a precursor to all of the steroid hormones. You
cannot make estrogen, testosterone, cortisone, and a
host of other vital hormones without cholesterol."
Vitamin D and Your
Cholesterol
You probably are aware
of the incredible influence of vitamin D on your health.
If you aren"t, or need a refresher, you can visit
my vitamin D page.
What most people do not
realize is that the best way to obtain your vitamin D is
from safe exposure to sun on your skin. The UVB rays in
sunlight interact with the cholesterol on your skin and
convert it to vitamin D.
Bottom line?
If your cholesterol
level is too low you will not be able to use the sun to
generate sufficient levels of vitamin D.
Additionally, it
provides some intuitive feedback that if cholesterol
were so dangerous, why would your body use it as
precursor for vitamin D and virtually all of the steroid
hormones in your body?
Other "evidence" that
cholesterol is good for you?
Consider the role of
"good" HDL cholesterol. Essentially, HDL takes
cholesterol from your body"s tissues and arteries, and
brings it back to your liver, where most of your
cholesterol is produced. If the purpose of this was to
eliminate cholesterol from your body, it would make
sense that the cholesterol would be shuttled back to
your kidneys or intestines so your body could remove it.
Instead, it goes back to
your liver. Why?
Because your liver is
going to reuse it.
"It is taking it
back to your liver so that your liver can recycle
it; put it back into other particles to be taken to
tissues and cells that need it," Dr. Rosedale
explains. "Your body is trying to make and
conserve the cholesterol for the precise reason that
it is so important, indeed vital, for health."
Cholesterol and
Inflammation – What"s the Connection?
Inflammation has become
a bit of a buzzword in the medical field because it has
been linked to so many different diseases. And one of
those diseases is heart disease … the same heart disease
that cholesterol is often blamed for.
What am I getting at?
Well, first consider the
role of inflammation in your body. In many respects,
it"s a good thing as it"s your body"s natural response
to invaders it perceives as threats. If you get a cut
for instance, the process of inflammation is what allows
you to heal.
Specifically during
inflammation:
- Your blood vessels
constrict to keep you from bleeding to death
- Your blood becomes
thicker so it can clot
- Your immune system
sends cells and chemicals to fight viruses, bacteria
and other "bad guys" that could infect the area
- Cells multiply to
repair the damage
Ultimately, the cut is
healed and a protective scar may form over the area.
If your arteries are
damaged, a very similar process occurs inside of your
body, except that a "scar" in your artery is known as
plaque.
This plaque, along with
the thickening of your blood and constricting of your
blood vessels that normally occur during the
inflammatory process, can indeed increase your risk of
high blood pressure and heart attacks.
Notice that cholesterol
has yet to even enter the picture.
Cholesterol comes in
because, in order to replace your damaged cells, it is
necessary.
Remember that no cell
can form without it.
So if you have damaged
cells that need to be replaced, your liver will be
notified to make more cholesterol and release it into
your bloodstream. This is a deliberate process that
takes place in order for your body to produce new,
healthy cells.
It"s also possible, and
quite common, for damage to occur in your body on a
regular basis. In this case, you will be in a dangerous
state of chronic inflammation.
The test usually used to
determine if you have chronic inflammation is a
C-reactive protein (CRP) blood test. CRP level is used
as a marker of inflammation in your arteries.
Generally speaking:
- A CRP level under 1
milligrams per liter of blood means you have a low
risk for cardiovascular disease
- 1 to 3 milligrams
means your risk is intermediate
- More than 3
milligrams is high risk
Even conventional
medicine is warming up to the idea that chronic
inflammation can trigger heart attacks. But they stop
short of seeing the big picture.
In the eyes of
conventional medicine, when they see increased
cholesterol circulating in your bloodstream, they
conclude that it -- not the underlying damage to your
arteries -- is the cause of heart attacks.
Which brings me to my
next point.
The Insanity of Lowering
Cholesterol
Sally Fallon, the
president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and Mary
Enig, Ph.D, an expert in lipid biochemistry, have gone
so far as to call high cholesterol "an invented disease,
a "problem" that emerged when health professionals
learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood."[iii]
And this explanation is
spot on.
If you have increased
levels of cholesterol, it is at least in part because of
increased inflammation in your body. The cholesterol is
there to do a job: help your body to heal and repair.
Conventional medicine
misses the boat entirely when they dangerously recommend
that lowering cholesterol with drugs is the way to
reduce your risk of heart attacks, because what is
actually needed is to address whatever is causing your
body damage -- and leading to increased inflammation and
then increased cholesterol.
As Dr. Rosedale so
rightly points out:2
"If excessive
damage is occurring such that it is necessary to
distribute extra cholesterol through the
bloodstream, it would not seem very wise to merely
lower the cholesterol and forget about why it is
there in the first place.
It would seem
much smarter to reduce the extra need for the
cholesterol -- the excessive damage that is
occurring, the reason for the chronic inflammation."
I"ll discuss how to do
this later in the report, but first let"s take a look at
the dangers of low cholesterol -- and how it came to be
that cholesterol levels needed to be so low in the first
place.
If Your Cholesterol is Too
Low …
All kinds of nasty
things can happen to your body. Remember, every single
one of your cells needs cholesterol to thrive --
including those in your brain. Perhaps this is why low
cholesterol wreaks havoc on your psyche.
One large study
conducted by Dutch researchers found that men with
chronically low cholesterol levels showed a consistently
higher risk of having depressive symptoms.[iv]
This may be because
cholesterol affects the metabolism of serotonin, a
substance involved in the regulation of your mood. On a
similar note, Canadian researchers found that those in
the lowest quarter of total cholesterol concentration
had more than six times the risk of committing suicide
as did those in the highest quarter.[v]
Dozens of studies also
support a connection between low or lowered cholesterol
levels and violent behavior, through this same pathway:
lowered cholesterol levels may lead to lowered brain
serotonin activity, which may, in turn, lead to
increased violence and aggression.[vi]
And one meta-analysis of
over 41,000 patient records found that people who take
statin drugs to lower their cholesterol as much as
possible may have a higher risk of cancer,[vii]
while other studies have linked low cholesterol to
Parkinson"s disease.
What cholesterol level
is too low? Brace yourself.
Probably any level much
under 150 -- an optimum would be more like 200.
Now I know what you are
thinking: "But my doctor tells me my cholesterol needs
to be under 200 to be healthy." Well let me
enlighten you about how these cholesterol
recommendations came to be. And I warn you, it is not a
pretty story.
This is a significant
issue. I have seen large numbers of people who have
their cholesterol lowered below 150, and there is little
question in my mind that it is causing far more harm
than any benefit they are receiving by lowering their
cholesterol this low.
Who Decided What
Cholesterol Levels are Healthy or Harmful?
In 2004, the U.S.
government"s National Cholesterol Education Program
panel advised those at risk for heart disease to attempt
to reduce their LDL cholesterol to specific, very low,
levels.
Before 2004, a
130-milligram LDL cholesterol level was considered
healthy. The updated guidelines, however, recommended
levels of less than 100, or even less than 70 for
patients at very high risk.
Keep in mind that these
extremely low targets often require multiple
cholesterol-lowering drugs to achieve.
Fortunately, in 2006 a
review in the Annals of Internal Medicine[viii]
found that there is insufficient evidence to support
the target numbers outlined by the panel. The authors of
the review were unable to find research providing
evidence that achieving a specific LDL target level was
important in and of itself, and found that the studies
attempting to do so suffered from major flaws.
Several of the
scientists who helped develop the guidelines even
admitted that the scientific evidence supporting the
less-than-70 recommendation was not very strong.
So how did these
excessively low cholesterol guidelines come about?
Eight of the
nine doctors on the panel that developed the
new cholesterol guidelines had been making money from
the drug companies that manufacture statin
cholesterol-lowering drugs.[ix]
The same drugs that the
new guidelines suddenly created a huge new market for in
the United States.
Coincidence? I think
not.
Now, despite the finding
that there is absolutely NO evidence to show that
lowering your LDL cholesterol to 100 or below is good
for you, what do you think the American Heart
Association STILL recommends?
Lowering your LDL
cholesterol levels to less than 100.[x]
And to make matters
worse, the standard recommendation to get to that level
almost always includes one or more cholesterol-lowering
drugs.
The Dangers of
Cholesterol-Lowering Medications
If you are concerned
about your cholesterol levels, taking a drug should be
your absolute last resort. And when I say last resort,
I"m saying the odds are very high, greater than 100 to
1, that you don"t need drugs to lower your cholesterol.
To put it another way,
among the more than 20,000 patients who have come to my
clinic, only four or five of them truly needed these
drugs, as they had genetic challenges of familial
hypercholesterolemia that required it..
Contrast this to what is
going on in the general population. According to data
from Medco Health Solutions Inc., more than half of
insured Americans are taking drugs for chronic health
conditions. And cholesterol-lowering medications are the
second most common variety among this group, with nearly
15 percent of chronic medication users taking them (high
blood pressure medications -- another vastly
over-prescribed category -- were first).[xi]
Disturbingly, as written
in BusinessWeek early in 2008, "Some
researchers have even suggested -- half-jokingly -- that
the medications should be put in the water supply."[xii]
Count yourself lucky
that you probably do NOT need to take
cholesterol-lowering medications, because these are some
nasty little pills.
Statin drugs work by
inhibiting an enzyme in your liver that"s needed to
manufacture cholesterol. What is so concerning about
this is that when you go tinkering around with the
delicate workings of the human body, you risk throwing
everything off kilter.
Case in point, "statin
drugs inhibit not just the production of cholesterol,
but a whole family of intermediary substances, many if
not all of which have important biochemical functions in
their own right," say Enig and Fallon.3
For starters, statin
drugs deplete your body of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), which
is beneficial to heart health and muscle function.
Because doctors rarely inform people of this risk and
advise them to take a CoQ10 supplement, this depletion
leads to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness, and
eventually heart failure.
Muscle pain and
weakness, a condition called rhabdomyolysis, is actually
the most common side effect of statin drugs, which is
thought to occur because statins activate the atrogin-1
gene, which plays a key role in muscle atrophy.[xiii]
By the way, muscle pain
and weakness may be an indication that your body tissues
are actually breaking down -- a condition that can cause
kidney damage.
Statin drugs have also
been linked to:
- An increased risk
of polyneuropathy (nerve damage that causes pain in
the hands and feet and trouble walking)
- Dizziness
- Cognitive
impairment, including memory loss[xiv]
- A potential
increased risk of cancer[xv]
- Decreased function
of the immune system[xvi]
- Depression
- Liver problems,
including a potential increase in liver enzymes (so
people taking statins must be regularly monitored
for normal liver function)
And recently a possible
association was found between statins and an increased
risk of Lou Gehrig"s disease.[xvii]
Other
cholesterol-lowering drugs besides statins also have
side effects, most notably muscle pain and weakness.
IMPORTANT NOTE
If, for whatever reason,
you or someone you know or love does not believe the
information in this report and chooses to stay on statin
drugs, then please make sure they at least take one to
two Ubiquinols per day.
This will help prevent
all the side effects mentioned above.
Ubiquinol is the reduced
version of Coenzyme Q-10 and is far more effective if
you are over 35-40 years old. It is the form of the
supplement that actually works, and if you take CoQ-10
and your body can"t reduce it to uniquinol you are just
fooling yourself and wasting your money.
You can visit our
ubiquinol information page for more details.
Are Cholesterol Drugs Even
Effective?
With all of these risks,
the drugs had better be effective, right? Well, even
this is questionable. At least, it depends on how you
look at it.
Most cholesterol
lowering drugs can effectively lower your
cholesterol numbers, but are they actually making
you any healthier, and do they help prevent heart
disease?
Have you ever heard of
the statistic known as NNT, or number needed to
treat?
I didn"t think so. In
fact, most doctors haven"t either. And herein lies the
problem.
NNT answers the
question: How many people have to take a particular drug
to avoid one incidence of a medical issue (such as a
heart attack)?
For example, if a drug
had an NNT of 50 for heart attacks, then 50 people have
to take the drug in order to prevent one heart attack.
Easy enough, right?
Well, drug companies
would rather that you not focus on NNT, because when you
do, you get an entirely different picture of their
"miracle" drugs. Take, for instance, Pfizer"s Lipitor,
which is the most prescribed cholesterol medication in
the world and has been prescribed to more than 26
million Americans.[xviii]
According to Lipitor"s
own Web site, Lipitor is clinically proven to lower bad
cholesterol 39-60 percent, depending on the dose. Sounds
fairly effective, right?
Well, BusinessWeek
actually did an excellent story on this very topic
earlier this year,[xix]
and they found the REAL numbers right on Pfizer"s
own newspaper ad for Lipitor.
Upon first glance, the
ad boasts that Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36
percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow
the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller
type:
"That means in a
large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar
pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of
patients taking Lipitor."
What this means is that
for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years,
three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had
heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted
in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people.
The NNT, in this case,
is 100. One hundred people have to take Lipitor for more
than three years to prevent one heart attack. And the
other 99 people, well, they"ve just dished out hundreds
of dollars and increased their risk of a multitude of
side effects for nothing.
So you can see how the
true effectiveness of cholesterol drugs like Lipitor is
hidden behind a smokescreen.
Or in some cases, not
hidden at all.
Zetia and Vytorin: No
Medical Benefits
Early in 2008, it came
out that Zetia, which works by inhibiting absorption of
cholesterol from your intestines, and Vytorin, which is
a combination of Zetia and Zocor (a statin drug), do not
work.
This was discovered
AFTER the drugs acquired close to 20 percent of the U.S.
market for cholesterol-lowering drugs. And also after
close to 1 million prescriptions for the drugs were
being written each week in the United States, bringing
in close to $4 billion in 2007.[xx]
It was only after the
results of a trial by the drugs" makers, Merck and
Schering-Plough, were released that this was found out.
Never mind that the trial was completed in April 2006,
and results were not released until January 2008.
And it"s no wonder the
drug companies wanted to hide these results.
While Zetia does lower
cholesterol by 15 percent to 20 percent, trials did not
show that it reduces heart attacks or strokes, or that
it reduces plaques in arteries that can lead to heart
problems.
The trial by the drugs"
makers, which studied whether Zetia could reduce the
growth of plaques, found that plaques grew nearly
twice as fast in patients taking Zetia along with
Zocor (Vytorin) than in those taking Zocor alone.[xxi]
Of course, the answer is
not to turn back to typical statin drugs to lower your
cholesterol, as many of the so-called experts would have
you believe.
You see, statins are
thought to have a beneficial effect on inflammation in
your body, thereby lowering your risk of heart attack
and stroke.
But you can lower
inflammation in your body naturally, without risking any
of the numerous side effects of statin drugs. This
should also explain why my guidelines for lowering
cholesterol are identical to those to lower
inflammation.
For more in-depth
information about cholesterol-lowering drugs, please see
my recently updated
statin drug index page.
How to Lower Inflammation,
and Thereby Your Risk of Heart Disease, Naturally
There is a major
misconception that you must avoid foods like eggs and
saturated fat to protect your heart. While it"s true
that fats from animal sources contain cholesterol, I"ve
explained earlier in this article why this should not
scare you -- but I"ll explain even further here.
This misguided principle
is based on the "lipid hypothesis" -- developed in the
1950s by nutrition pioneer Ancel Keys -- that linked
dietary fat to coronary heart disease.
The nutrition community
of that time completely accepted the hypothesis, and
encouraged the public to cut out butter, red meat,
animal fats, eggs, dairy and other "artery clogging"
fats from their diets -- a radical change at that time.
What you may not know is
that when Keys published his analysis that claimed to
prove the link between dietary fats and coronary heart
disease, he selectively analyzed information from only
six countries to prove his correlation, rather than
comparing all the data available at the time -- from 22
countries.
As a result of this
"cherry-picked" data, government health organizations
began bombarding the public with advice that has
contributed to the diabetes and obesity epidemics going
on today: eat a low-fat diet.
Not surprisingly,
numerous studies have actually shown that Keys" theory
was wrong and saturated fats are healthy, including
these studies from Fallon and Enig"s classic article
The Skinny on Fats:[xxii]
- A survey of South
Carolina adults found no correlation of blood
cholesterol levels with "bad" dietary habits, such
as use of red meat, animal fats, fried foods,
butter, eggs, whole milk, bacon, sausage and cheese.[xxiii]
- A Medical Research
Council survey showed that men eating butter ran
half the risk of developing heart disease as those
using margarine.[xxiv]
Of course, as Americans
cut out nutritious animal fats from their diets, they
were left hungry. So they began eating more processed
grains, more vegetable oils, and more high-fructose corn
syrup, all of which are nutritional disasters.
It is this latter type
of diet that will eventually lead to increased
inflammation, and therefore cholesterol, in your body.
So don"t let anyone scare you away from saturated fat
anymore.
Chronic inflammation is
actually caused by a laundry list of items such as:
- Oxidized
cholesterol (cholesterol that has gone rancid,
such as that from overcooked, scrambled eggs)
- Eating lots of
sugar and grains
- Eating foods cooked
at high temperatures
- Eating trans fats
- A sedentary
lifestyle
- Smoking
- Emotional stress
So to sum it all up, in
order to lower your inflammation and cholesterol levels
naturally, you must address the items on this list.
How to Lower Your
Cholesterol Naturally …
- Make sure you"re
getting plenty of high-quality, animal-based
omega3-fats. I prefer those from krill oil. New
research suggests that as little as 500 mg may lower
your total cholesterol and triglycerides and will
likely increase your HDL cholesterol.
- Reduce, with the
plan of eliminating, grains and sugars in your daily
diet. It is especially important to eliminate
dangerous sugars such as fructose. If your HDL/Cholesterol
ratio is abnormal and needs to be improved it would
also serve you well to virtually eliminate fruits
from your diet, as that it also a source of
fructose. Once your cholesterol improves you can
gradually reintroduce it to levels that don"t raise
your cholesterol.
- Eat the right foods
for
your nutritional type. You can learn your
nutritional type by taking our FREE test.
- Eat a good portion
of your food raw.
- Eat healthy,
preferably raw, fats that correspond to your
nutritional type. This includes:
- Olive oil
- Coconut and
coconut oil
- Organic raw
dairy products (including butter, cream, sour
cream, cheese, etc.)
- Avocados
- Raw nuts
- Seeds
- Eggs (lightly
cooked with yolks intact or raw)
- Organic,
grass-fed meats
- Get the right
amount of exercise, especially
Peak Fitness type of exercise. When you exercise
you increase your circulation and the blood flow
throughout your body. The components of your immune
system are also better circulated, which means your
immune system has a better chance of fighting an
illness before it has the opportunity to spread.
- Avoid smoking and
drinking excessive amounts of alcohol.
- Address your
emotional challenges. I particularly love the
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) for stress
management.
So there you have it;
the reasons why high cholesterol is a worry that many of
you simply do not need to have, along with a simple plan
to optimize yours.
If someone you love is
currently taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, I urge you
to share this information with them as well, and take
advantage of the thousands of free pages of information
on
www.Mercola.com.
For the majority of you
reading this right now, there"s no reason to risk your
health with cholesterol-lowering drugs. With the plan
I"ve just outlined, you"ll achieve the cholesterol
levels you were meant to have, along with the very
welcome "side effects" of increased energy, mood and
mental clarity.
Too good to be true?
Hardly.
For the vast majority of
people, making a few lifestyle changes causes healthy
cholesterol levels to naturally occur.
As always, your health
really is in your hands. Now it"s up to you to take
control -- and shape it into something great.
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[i]
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[ii]
Mercola.com, Cholesterol is NOT the Cause of
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About Popular Cholesterol-Lowering Medicines,"
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