GARLIC & CHOLESTEROL
Believe it or not, garlic has a substantial effect on cholesterol levels, but you would need between 1 to 4 cloves of fresh garlic a day to achieve a significant therapeutic result. Fortunately, the compounds in garlic responsible for its therapeutic benefit can be isolated in pill form.
However, in order to be effective, […]

GUGULIPID & CHOLESTEROL
Gugulipid is extracted from the mukul myrrh tree, which is native to India. It appears to get it’s cholesterol lowering effects from increasing the liver’s metabolism of LDL (the bad cholesterol).
In a double blind study of 125 patients comparing the effect of gugulipid with the cholesterol lowering drug clofibrate over a period of […]

VITAMIN C & CHOLESTEROL
If you have read my post Anti-Aging Supplementation Options post, you may very well already be taking 2000 mg of vitamin C a day. That should be plenty for cholesterol control purposes.
It has been shown that the higher the level of vitamin C in the blood, the lower the total cholesterol count […]

OTHER OPTIONS
Given inositol hexaniacinate’s effectiveness, that’s probably a good choice to try first. However, if you cannot tolerate inositol hexaniacinate, there are more options you can try.
PANTETHINE
Pantethine, a stable form of vitamin B5, inhibits the production of cholesterol by the liver. In a one-year clinical trial conducted with 24 patients, pantethine was shown to decrease […]

INOSITOL HEXANIACINATE
Inositol hexaniacinate’s side effects are minimal and it works even better than regular niacin, according to a study comparing the effect of niacin and inositol hexaniacinate on hyperlipidemic Buscat rabbits (The role of nicotinic acid and inositol hexaniacinate as anticholesterolemic and antilipemic agents. Nutr Reports Int 1983;28:899-911). The inositol hexaniacinate caused a 79.5 % […]

NIACIN & CHOLESTEROL
Niacin has been known to lower cholesterol since the 1950s. Of particular interest is a comparative study between Lovastatin (a popular statin drug) and Niacin. 136 patients with high cholesterol were randomly assigned either Lovastatin or Niacin over a 26 week period. Although the Lovastatin initial lowered LDL cholesterol more quickly than the […]

STATIN DRUGS
The most popular drugs for controlling cholesterol are the statin drugs, which include Lipitor (atorvastatin), Mevacor (lovastatin), Pravachol (pravastatin), and Zocor (simvastatin).
Sure enough, they do lower LDL cholesterol, and very quickly too. However, there are some problems with statin drugs. First of all, they are very expensive, which is not so much of a […]

INTRODUCTION
My wife has high cholesterol, so I’ve been doing some research on the available strategies to lower cholesterol.
Let’s start with the obvious.
DIET
If you start out with a healthy diet, you’re already most of the way there. For ideas about what a healthy diet consists of, check out my posts Foods To Enjoy, Foods To Restrict, […]

INTRAOCULAR PRESSURE
Along with blood pressure, coffee drinking also elevates intraocular pressure, the main cause of optic nerve damage for people suffering from glaucoma (Caffeine and intraocular pressure in a Nigerian population. Journal of Glaucoma, 10(1):25-31).
To make matters worse, magnesium deficiency, which is linked to glaucoma, is made worse by coffee drinking, which inhibits absorption […]