I dropped my cholesterol from 240 to 150 in less than six weeks after my Massachusetts General physician wanted to put me on Lipitor a few years ago. The side effects of statin drugs were a serious motivator, since they interfere with CoQ10 metabolism and raise the risk of sudden heart failure. I used the protocol from the Life Extension Foundation to produce an effect that my physician said was amazing. He had never seen anything like it in the history of his practice. At the time, I was taking a Chinese red rice supplement, now banned by the FDA due to pharmaceutical lobbying. It is an intellectual property issue. The FDA actually claims that Chinese red rice conflicts with patents on cholesterol drugs! I think Chinese red rice is prior art having been used for a couple of thousand years before Lipitor. You can order it offshore. However, there are readily available supplements that work just as well.
The Life Extension Foundation protocol recommends Policosanol, along with many other supplements. In particular, anyone concerned about their heart or brain should be taking pharmaceutical grade fish oil. There is also a product called Sytrinol which I like as well as Policosanol and has even more research behind it. Either should do as well or better than prescription drugs without the side effects. Of course, enough regular exercise to lose a few pounds is mandatory if you want to achieve my results.
Whatever you do, work with your physician, and document your drop in cholesterol with lab tests. Research studies (or even your physician’s recommendations) don’t mean much until you see your cholesterol go down in a lab report. Also, you should feel a lot better and be able to exercise harder when your cholesterol drops from the right protocol (not likely to be true for drug protocols). Get your LifeWave patches to powerup your exercise routine. If you don’t feel a lot better in this process, something is missing from your approach.
I’ve posted previously on research that shows plaque buildup is related to inflammation and that injecting mice with oxidized plaque prevents them from getting it, like a vaccination. That means there are pathogens causing inflammation that cause cholesterol to go up. That increases the amount of plaque on your artery walls as your body uses the cholesterol to wall off the inflammation. My current frequency research indicates there a multiple pathogens acting in combination (bacteria, virus, nanobacteria, and fungus) to cause this phenomena. These pathogens are common in some of the food we eat, particularly red meat. So you better pump up your immune system by taking 4Life Transfer Factor Cardio to beat back the pathogens. But I digress, let’s get back to Policosanol.
Policosanol: Clinical pharmacology and therapeutic significance of a new lipid-lowering agent
Ioanna Gouni-Berthold, MD, Heiner K. Berthold, MD, PhD, Rotenburg an der Fulda and Bonn, Germany
Am Heart J 2002;143:356-65
Background: Policosanol is a mixture of higher primary aliphatic alcohols isolated from sugar cane wax, whose main component is octacosanol. The mixture has been shown to lower cholesterol in animal models, healthy volunteers, and patients with type II hypercholesterolemia.
Methods: We reviewed the literature on placebo-controlled lipid-lowering studies using policosanol published in peer-reviewed journals as well as studies investigating its mechanism of action and its clinical pharmacology.
Results: At doses of 10 to 20 mg per day, policosanol lowers total cholesterol by 17% to 21% and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol by 21% to 29% and raises high-density lipoprotein cholesterol by 8% to 15%. Because higher doses have not been tested up to now, it cannot be excluded that effectiveness may be even greater. Daily doses of 10 mg of policosanol have been shown to be equally effective in lowering total or LDL cholesterol as the same dose of simvastatin or pravastatin. Triglyceride levels are not influenced by policosanol. At dosages of up to 20 mg per day, policosanol is safe and well tolerated, as studies of >3 years of therapy indicate. There is evidence from in vitro studies that policosanol may inhibit hepatic cholesterol synthesis at a step before mevalonate generation, but direct inhibition of the hydroxy-methylglutaryl–coenzyme A reductase is unlikely. Animal studies suggest that LDL catabolism may be enhanced, possibly through receptor-mediated mechanisms, but the precise mechanism of action is not understood yet. Policosanol has additional beneficial properties such as effects on smooth muscle cell proliferation, platelet aggregation, and LDL peroxidation. Data on efficacy determined by clinical end points such as rates of cardiac events or cardiac mortality are lacking.
Conclusions: Policosanol seems to be a very promising phytochemical alternative to classic lipid-lowering agents such as the statins and deserves further evaluation.
See also: Ter Arkh 2000;72(12):7-10
Results of the multicenter controlled study of the hypolipidemic drug polycosanol in Russia
Nikitin IuP, Slepchenko NV, Gratsianskii NA, Nechaev AS, Syrkin AL, Poltavskaia MG, Sumarokov AV, Revazov AV.