Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally

The CDC reports that cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the number one killer – in 2005 over 900,000 lives were lost that’s 2,400 deaths a day.  That’s more lives than cancer, HIV/AIDS, and accidents combined!

They also point out that eighty million Americans (nearly 1 in 3 people in this country) have not just one but several types of cardiovascular disease, which includes hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, heart failure, and diabetes. Typical red flags for these patients may include obesity, tobacco use, poor diet, physical inactivity, and alcohol abuse.

Complications of CVDs contribute to more than 80 million doctor visits a year and 6 million hospitalizations keeping medical professionals busier than ever. Additionally, physicians, in order to effectively treat patients are charged with keeping up on all the new information on the latest clinical trials, advances in treatment, and of course practice guidelines, which are often being updated.

I have often pointed out that we do know how to prevent CVD – medical science has learned a great deal about heart disease and cholesterol and its links, yet our nation still suffers from the same ailment. The solution is simple – proper nutrition and exercise can bring about an end to this madness.

A team of University of California, San Diego School of Medicine physician-researchers is proposing that aggressive intervention to lower cholesterol levels as early as childhood is the best approach available today to reducing the incidence of coronary heart disease. They state that with a large body of evidence proving that low cholesterol levels equate with low rates of heart disease, “…our long-term goal should be to alter our lifestyle accordingly, beginning in infancy or early childhood” and that “…instituting a low-saturated fat, low-cholesterol diet in infancy (7 months) is perfectly safe, without adverse effects…”They propose lowering low-density lipoproteins (the so-called “bad cholesterol”) to less than 50 mg./dl. even in children and young adults is a safe and potentially life-saving standard, through lifestyle (diet and exercise) changes if possible. They do not advocate using drug therapy to reach these levels, especially in children with no other risk factors, but to achieve these low levels through “TLC,” or “therapeutic lifestyle changes,” such as diet and exercise.