Best Cholesterol Supplements What are the best cholesterol lowering supplements? Actually the first question really is, are there supplements that can actually lower your blood cholesterol level? The scientific answer is, yes, there are supplements that can do that.
Your next question should be, are all the supplements that can lower cholesterol safe to use? And the answer to that is, no, they’re not all safe; some can actually do significant damage to your body, particularly your liver.
The other thing that always comes up is, not all the supplements that claim to lower cholesterol can actually lower cholesterol. This is where I lose some faith in the natural health products industry, where there are companies that make supplements that claim they can do things when in fact, they cannot and the product is totally meaningless.
You need someone to separate the fact from fiction, and that’s where I come in. when it comes to lowering cholesterol, there are two outstanding supplements that are safe and proven to lower cholesterol and they’re gum guggul and artichoke leaf extract.
Gum guggul is derived from the mukul myrrh tree. In India they discovered that this resin, which we call guggul or guggul lipid. In the Indian medical system you’ll see many, many published clinical trials using gum guggul or guggul lipid. It seems to lower cholesterol by getting the cells of the body to clear cholesterol from the blood stream with a greater degree of efficiency and when the liver picks up that extra cholesterol it can convert it into bile acids and flush it though the bile duct into the intestinal tract. When you have a bowel movement it leaves the body, so you’re lowering your cholesterol without doing damage.
Studies show – and I’ve seen this in my own patients – that you can lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels by as much as 25-35 percent, just in a 6-8 week period using the right dose of a standardized grade of gum guggul, which is equivalent to what many drugs can do. There is a remarkable reduction, and the safety profile is excellent.
The other supplement that’s great is artichoke leaf extract. It basically has the effect of flushing bile through the liver and gallbladder into the intestinal tract so when you have a bowel movement, the bile leaves your body. In order to make bile for the next meal, you have to take cholesterol out of the bloodstream and convert it into bile. It sounds a bit complicated, but the truth is with artichoke leaf extract, you’re clearing more cholesterol from the bloodstream, converting it into bile and then you’re flushing it out through the fecal route on a more regular basis and your blood cholesterol then drops down.
I like to put patients on a combination product that has both gum guggul and artichoke leaf extract together. That’s all explained in my Cholesterol Lowering Lifestyle program that’s available right here, and it’s one you should follow because it’s effective.
There are other supplements you’ll come across that claim they can lower cholesterol, like garlic extract. Garlic can lower cholesterol to a very small degree or percentage, but there is a risk with taking garlic extract, that you might end up with a bleeding disorder. This has happened in humans. So I don’t recommend garlic extract.
There is also a supplement called policosanol that you’re see in health food and drug stores, that’s been touted for lowering cholesterol. The latest scientific evidence shows it doesn’t actually have any affect at all. So I’m not a fan of policosanol.
Some sterodic compounds, sterolins or sterols from plants claim they can lower cholesterol, but the cholesterol lowering effect is very modest compared to gum guggul and artichoke leaf extract, so I don’t think they’re really that important.
Red rice yeast lowers cholesterol very well. The problem is, it lowers it the same way that a statin drug, r Lipitor or Crestor would lower it, meaning it could pose a threat to liver, kidney or muscle damage, so I wouldn’t do this first.
The same is true for another product called Pantethine, which a lot of people use to lower cholesterol. It’s natural and looks a lot like the B vitamin, pantothenic acid, but it’s not exactly pantothenic acid. So you say well, that seems natural. Well, it’s fairly natural, but it also lowers cholesterol the same way that statin drugs do, so the risk is that you might end up with liver, kidney or muscle damage that would have been avoidable had you chosen another route.
I believe the best place to start, and if you’re going to use a supplement to lower your cholesterol, is with gum guggul and artichoke leaf extract. That’s the approach I’ve used and I believe that’s where you begin.
To get all the details I want you to have on how to lower your cholesterol naturally, I want you to download the program that I have here. It’s my Cholesterol Lowering Lifestyle program. You should get it immediately and start acting on all of the strategies, not just the supplement strategies; all the lifestyle strategies.
At you’ll see all of published review articles, you’ll see many videos that I’ve created, my footage from my professional seminars and other downloads and resources that I created that will help you to live a long, healthy and functional life. That’s what we all want; not to just be alive with a heartbeat but to be highly functional in body and mind as you get older..
All of the teaching materials and review articles that I have there have all of the scientific references so you’ll know that you’re getting only the best evidence-based, scientific information on any health topic that you are searching for.
Be sure to use as an ongoing, reliable health and resource for both you and your family members. Thanks so much for your time.
