What have grapefruit to do with lowering cholesterol?

If you’re trying to lower your cholesterol you have quite a number of choices. Yesterday we wrote about lowering cholesterol naturally.

And our choice is always to try natural methods to lower cholesterol, because we don’t like to see people taking the risks of using cholesterol lowering drugs like statin drugs to lower cholesterol because of risks associated with these drugs.

And you need to remember that if you’ve been told by your doctor to lower your cholesterol and he’s prescribed statin drugs to you to do this, he is, in effect, asking you to stay on statins for the rest of your life.

Because once you’ve started on them they may work, but if you stop your cholesterol goes back up unless you’ve changed something else significant in your life as well.

Anyway, we’ve been reading about one of the other considerations of using drugs like statins to lower cholesterol levels. It’s called the “grapefruit effect”.

No it doesn’t mean that if you eat lots of grapefruit you can lower your cholesterol by eating grapefruit. In fact it’s the opposite.

Scientists have found that if you are on cholesterol lowering prescription drugs like statins, that if you eat grapefruit then this will increase the levels of these drugs in your bloodstream without you actually taking any more of them.

Canadian scientists together with scientists from the University of Michigan found that an enzyme in your stomach interferes with the breakdown of these prescription drugs and so, as it stops them from breaking down in your stomach, will increase the blood levels of these drugs.

And eating grapefruit increases this to potentially toxic levels. It’s not currently understood why.

And it seems that the effects of eating grapefruit on these drugs varies from person to person too.

Another reason why you ought to consider more natural cholesterol lowering supplements together with some basic diet and lifestyle changes.

We would always prefer to start with natural methods rather than take the risks associated with cholesterol lowering drugs. More on Lowering Cholesterol And The Grapefruit Effect.

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Written by - Natural Health

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Would you prefer to take cholesterol lowering drugs, or naturally lower your cholesterol?

So many people seem to have a cholesterol problem. High total cholesterol, or perhaps the ratio between your good, or HDL cholesterol and your bad, or LDL cholesterol, is wrong.

And your doctor is telling you that you need to take more notice of your cholesterol levels, and overall heart health.

And your doctor may be suggesting tackling the problem with prescription drugs like statin drugs.

Unfortunately drugs generally, and statin drugs in particular, do not come without some risks of side effects. Statin drugs have been linked to fatigue, nausea, gastrointestinal problems, muscle weakness and general pain. Of course the drug industry denies all of this, but it’s still there.

What options do you have for lowering cholesterol naturally?

First we need to identify what exactly we mean by lowering cholesterol “naturally”. What exactly is “natural”?

For the purposes of this discussion we take “natural” cholesterol management to mean a non prescription drug approach to managing cholesterol levels.

This should include a good diet to lower cholesterol, improved exercise levels and the use of natural cholesterol managing supplements.

Most people find that lowering cholesterol levels by diet alone is difficult. Your body produces it’s own cholesterol and so changing your diet only affects a portion of your total cholesterol input, and changing levels to lower cholesterol naturally through diet alone is pretty hard.

But a good cholesterol lowering diet is a part of the overall equation. You need to cut down on meat and dairy that is high in saturated fats and replace these with fruits, fresh vegetables and grains. This will also help with general or overall health, which in turn translates to improved general cardiovascular health.

And improving exercise levels is also an important part of the overall approach.

Finally you need to use a high quality natural cholesterol lowering supplement. The best natural cholesterol lowering supplements tackle the problem from a range of angles.

They reduce your body’s ability to produce cholesterol, reduce cholesterol absorption in the gut from food, and also increase the excretion of bile acid, which carries cholesterol with it.

So naturally lowering cholesterol levels is very achievable. You don’t need to risk side affects by taking prescription drugs like statins.

But you do need to manage your diet carefully, increase your exercise levels and start using a high quality natural cholesterol lowering supplement. More on Lowering Cholesterol Naturally. What Does It Mean?

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Written by - Natural Health

(And make sure you read our page about Natural Skin Care, it's quite an eye opener about modern skin care products.)

If your cholesterol is too high you’re considering taking drugs? Is there a more natural way?

If your cholesterol is too high you have quite a few choices. There’s a few things you can do to lower your cholesterol, and at the same time to make yourself healthier overall.

If your cholesterol is too high you ought to seriously consider a change of diet and lifestyle. This isn’t just to lower your cholesterol, it’s to make you healthier, and this itself should help you lower your cholesterol. And it should also make you feel better, and impact in other areas of your life.

So spend some time looking at both your diet, and how much exercise you do. Eat better, and exercise more, and you’ll get an improvement in your cholesterol levels, and perhaps an improvement in your good cholesterol/bad cholesterol ratio.

However if your cholesterol is too high a change of diet and increase in exercise may not be sufficient on it’s own.

Now of course you could take drugs, statin drugs are extremely common, and make massive amounts of money for the drug companies. Because once you’re on a statin drug you’re probably on it for life, so imagine how much money a drug company makes over your lifetime.

That of course doesn’t mean that statin drugs are no good, just that there are massive incentives for the drug companies to keep selling as many statin drugs as possible. And so they play down the problems that have been recorded by many using statin drugs, and the risks to taking these drugs to lower your cholesterol.

But is there are more natural approach to lowering your cholesterol that may work as well, or even better, than taking drugs.

Yes, there’s diet and lifestyle and exercise. But there’s more. I’d suggest a product called Cholest Natural by Xtend Life. The ingredients have all been shown to be extremely effective in lowering cholesterol, but equally as important they have all been shown also not to have any negative side effects. More on Is Your Cholesterol Too High But You Don’t Want To Take Drugs?

Get the finest (and safest) organic and natural skin care products on the planet. HERE

Written by - Natural Health

(And make sure you read our page about Natural Skin Care, it's quite an eye opener about modern skin care products.)