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May/June 2007 Alternative Health
Lowering Cholesterol without Prescription Drugs

by Janet Bond Brill

Janet Bond Brill

What if you could reduce "bad" cholesterol as much as cholesterol-lowering prescription drugs, but without taking a pill?

All the ingredients for this easy-to-follow Cholesterol Down plan are available at your local supermarket and are no more dangerous or expensive than almonds, oatmeal or walking.

Everyone talks about cholesterol, but few people actually understand what it is. In physical terms, it is a white fat-like substance with a consistency like candle wax that can be found nearly everywhere in the body: in the membranes of all cells, in the bile stored in the liver, in steroid hormones, and floating through the bloodstream in transport vehicles known as lipoproteins.

Despite its bad rap, some cholesterol is vitally important for good health, as it is a major building block for many structures within our bodies – even our bones and teeth, as cholesterol is a precursor for vitamin D.

LDL (low-density lipoprotein or bad cholesterol) is very high in cholesterol. This lipoprotein carries the majority of cholesterol in the blood and is considered the unhealthy one. HDL (high-density lipoprotein or "good" cholesterol) is a spherical blob of mostly protein, some cholesterol, phospholipids and very little fat.

Where Your Body Stores Cholesterol

Cells. Over 90 percent of all the cholesterol in the body is found in cell membranes. A great deal of cholesterol is also located in the nervous system, concentrated in the cells of the brain and spinal cord.

Liver. Huge amounts of cholesterol are found in the liver as a main component of bile, the digestive juice produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder.

Steroid hormones. Cholesterol is a primary structural element of steroid hormones such as cortisol and aldosterone and the sex hormones, so a high concentration of cholesterol is found in the glands where these products are synthesized. Cholesterol allows women to be feminine and men to be masculine – it's a building block of the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone.

Bloodstream. Cholesterol is found in the bloodstream as "blood cholesterol" in small circular packages called lipoproteins.

How Low Should You Go?

For the optimal prevention of heart disease, what is the ideal LDL cholesterol value to strive for? The consensus among the medical community appears to be that lower is better, especially for those at high risk for heart disease.

If you have been diagnosed with heart disease, then an LDL level of less than 70 mg/dL is wise goal in order to halt the progression of atherosclerosis. If you are currently in good health and want to stay that way, you should aim for an LDL value of under 100 mg/dL.

The Cholesterol Down Plan

The Cholesterol Down plan takes nine individually active cholesterol-lowering food ingredients – all scientifically shown to independently reduce LDL cholesterol-and combines them on a daily basis with a scientifically proven LDL-lowering exercise program. In effect, the simple concept of combining all these cholesterol-lowering foods with an exercise routine is as effective as combining several types of cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Each of the steps of the Cholesterol Down plan lowers bad cholesterol in a slightly different way. In this manner, the combination approach provides substantially more cholesterol-lowering strength than a single therapeutic treatment. Plant sterols, for example, work through a different mechanism than soy protein. Whereas sterols lower cholesterol by blocking absorption from the intestine, soy protein lowers cholesterol by increasing LDL receptors on the liver, resulting in increased LDL cholesterol removal from the bloodstream. Daily doses of both soy and plant sterols work jointly to cut cholesterol much more than either in isolation.

This approach is similar to combining a statin drug (which reduces cholesterol production in the liver and increases LDL clearance from the blood) with another drug such as Zetia (which blocks cholesterol absorption from the intestine). In this way, all 10 steps of the Cholesterol Down plan work together to pack a very powerful punch in lowering LDL levels by up to 47 percent, comparable to the effectiveness of statin drugs but without the side effects.

Janet Bond Brill, author of Cholesterol Down: 10 Simple Steps to Lower Your Cholesterol in 4 Weeks - Without Prescription Drugs, is a registered and licensed dietitian/nutritionist, exercise physiologist and certified wellness coach.Visit www.cholesteroldownbook.com or email queries@cholesteroldownbook.com. Reprinted from Cholesterol Down by Janet Bond Brill, Ph.D., R.D., LDN. Copyright © 2006. Published by Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House, Inc.