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Grapefruit Fiber and Lower Cholesterol

Jean Helmet is a content editor who focuses on a wide array of niche health topics. Her latest website – Natural Cholesterol Supplement focuses on cholesterol as a whole, and in partcular, a natural product our editors personally use with excellent health results known as – Cholest-Natural

Be sure to check out our cholesterol product of choice, it is the natural supplement we use and recommend to friends and family, and have done for over 3 years.

Red Yeast Rice [http://www.theredyeastrice.com] visit the website if you want more information on the supplement. The author, Akbar Williams, has interests in different topics and you can find more great articles like Testosterone [http://www.thetestosterone.com] and Hydroquinone.

This site is dedicated to information related to Red Yeast Rice. Get the latest articles and news as it relates to this powerful cholesterol lowering medication.

Does red yeast rice (RYR) lower cholesterol? Is it a safe natural alternative to the commonly prescribed cholesterol lowering drugs?

It has been used since the 7th century A.D. in China as both a food and medicinal nutrient. It has been noted in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as having the benefits as both a promoter of blood circulation and a digestive stimulant.

It is a by-product of cooked rice on which red yeast has been grown. The rice is then dried, powdered and used medicinally.

Its effectiveness in lowering cholesterol is backed by reliable and consistent scientific data as well as centuries of use in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Based on a recent study, 62 people with high cholesterol took red yeast rice daily for six months, and the other half of the study participants received identical placebo capsules. They also made changes in eating habits, exercise and other lifestyle adjustments. After three months, the LDL (so-called “bad” cholesterol) levels of those taking the active supplements had declined 27%, compared to 6% in the placebo group.

The participants in this study were unable to continue treatment with prescription cholesterol lowering drugs, due to adverse and possibly dangerous side effects. There were no significant side effects reported while using RYR.

Is Red Yeast Rice Safe?

Those raising safety concerns say that since RYR contains natural statins similar in effect to cholesterol lowering drugs, it’s logical that it would have the same risks. This argument is not valid because statins in prescription drugs have been chemically altered in a laboratory, whereas the statins in red yeast rice are naturally occurring.

Detractors often say that RYR is not regulated by the FDA and the supplements on the market vary in quality and may not be safe.

All dietary supplements are regulated by the FDA based on the guidelines of the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. Under DSHEA, supplement companies are responsible for determining that the nutritional supplements they manufacture are safe and that any claims made about them are substantiated by adequate evidence.

Although some critics argue that DSHEA is no regulation or excessively lax regulation, it seems that nutritional supplements are generally safe enough that this legislation does what it’s intended to do. Almost never do you hear of dietary supplements causing extreme and/or dangerous side effects or death.

The same cannot be said about the pharmaceutical industry, where drugs that have proven to be dangerous are regularly recalled by the FDA and personal injury law suits are common.

Although acceptance in the mainstream medical community is slow, at this time, there is no solid evidence that red yeast rice is unsafe. Although there is some variation in the quality of nutritional supplements, and under DSHEA, consumers are responsible for locating high quality and safe supplements produced by firms that adhere to agreed upon good manufacturing practices (GMP).

Of course, you may want to consult your health care provider before starting any supplementation program or to have any questions or concerns addressed. Also, it’s not recommended that you take red yeast rice if you’re also taking prescription cholesterol lowering drugs.

At this time, research and centuries of use in traditional medicine show that the answer to the question, “does red yeast rice lower cholesterol safely?” is “yes it does.” If you have high cholesterol and are unable to take prescription drugs because of side effects or you just want a safer, natural alternative, red yeast rice may be worth looking into.

By: Max Wardlow

About the Guest Author:

Visit Cholesterol Facts for more ways on how to naturally lower cholesterol

Among people who are prescribed statins by their doctors, as many as 40% stop taking them in less than a year. Cost may be one factor, however, side effects are usually the reason. Doctors usually dismiss the existence of side effects.

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego investigated how doctors responded to complaints of side effects by their patients. Side effects normally reported included debilitating muscle weakness, pain, and memory loss. The findings might surprise you. Rather than reporting adverse events to the FDA, many doctors denied that the drugs could cause undesirable symptoms. They told their patients they were imagining pain, mistakenly attributing symptoms to aging, and refusing to believe or simply ignoring patients’ complaints.

For centuries, red yeast rice has been used in traditional Chinese medicine to gently lower cholesterol. It is used to remedy indigestion, diarrhea, circulation and aid in spleen health. Studies in humans since the 1970′s have shown that it can lower total and LDL (bad) cholesterol.

UCLA conducted an eight-week study comparing red yeast rice with a placebo in 83 people with high cholesterol. The results, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that it reduced total and LDL cholesterol significantly.

Also published in the American Journal of Cardiology and other scientific journals, based on research in China, showed that among 5,000 people with high cholesterol, it significantly reduced rates of heart attacks and heart disease related deaths.

It is recommended for lowering unhealthful cholesterol levels. It should not be taken with statin drugs. Some experts recommend avoiding grapefruit juice while taking this supplement. Because it has a statin-like effect, it may deplete the body of certain levels of CoQ10. It is recommended that patients take 100 to 200 mg of CoQ10 when taking red yeast rice, or use a formula that combines it with CoQ10. This supplement can be found at your local health food store or vitamin and supplement stores.

By: Rose Ledoux

About the Guest Author:

Jean Helmet is a content editor who focuses on a wide array of niche health topics. Her latest website – Natural Cholesterol Supplement focuses on cholesterol as a whole, and in particular, a natural product our editors personally use with excellent health results known as – Cholest-Natural

Be sure to check out our cholesterol product of choice, it is the natural supplement we use and recommend to friends and family, and have done for over 3 years.

Effective recipes to lower cholesterol are easy to come by. However, if you are serious about bringing down your cholesterol levels, the recipes you use to contain cholesterol lowering foods, but they will also need to be enjoyable. You see, if you want to use diet to lower your cholesterol (which is the best and most effective way) the cholesterol lowering recipes that you use need to be those that you will stick with for the long term.

My point is that lowering cholesterol is going to require some lifestyle changes. It won’t be something that you can just change your habits for a week or two and then magically have lower cholesterol. Instead, you’re probably going to need a more structured diet plan that contains the best recipes to lower cholesterol.

While it is not primarily a diet for lowering cholesterol, the South Beach diet has many wonderful recipes that contain the best foods to bring down those cholesterol levels. Let’s take a look at some of the foods you will want to see in the cholesterol lowering recipes that you use.

The most effective foods to lower cholesterol are those that contain high amounts of soluble fiber such as vegetables, fruits, nuts and whole grains. Look for recipes to lower cholesterol that contain large servings of spinach and broccoli. One of my favorites is fish served on a bed of spinach with caramelized onion and feta over the top.

One of the best breakfast recipes to lower cholesterol is a frittata that includes large quantities of saut?ed vegetables and is made with egg beaters.

I invite you to visit my website where I discuss in more detail the recipes, foods and diets that are most effective at lowering cholesterol levels. Taking this approach to healthy cholesterol will improve the quality of your life for the long-term. Don’t let cholesterol lowering recipes that are boring or just plain bad tasting and derail your cholesterol lowering plan.

By: Van Crawford

About the Guest Author:

For those who have been advised to lower their cholesterol, but are concerned about the serious side effects associated with taking statin drugs (e.g. liver dysfunction, muscle atrophy, memory loss, etc.), clinically proven natural alternatives are available. The Chinese condiment Red Yeast Rice, for example, was judged by the Physician’s Desk Reference On Nutritional Supplements to “significantly reduce total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and total triglyceride concentrations, compared to a placebo.” Considering the fact that the PDR is the authoritative text in the medical field on supplements, and it is written by doctors for doctors, it is disappointing that few doctors are recommending Red Yeast Rice to manage hypercholesterolemia in their patients. After all, Red Yeast Rice contains the same cholesterol lowering HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor (lovastatin) as the drug Mevacor. And yet, even at doses six times lower, Red Yeast Rice out performed the pharmaceutical isolated lovastatin, showing a wider range of benefits and incomparably higher safety margin.

Despite these findings and in defiance of both common sense and the rights of consumers to control their health, both the FDA and the manufacturer of lovastatin lobbied the courts to outlaw the sale of Red Yeast Rice, arguing that its efficacy qualified it as a drug, requiring FDA and medical regulation. In 1999, the Federal District Court in Utah ruled against the FDA, stating that Red Yeast Rice was not a drug but a dietary supplement. More recently the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on July 24, 2000 that Red Yeast Rice is subject to the regulation of the U.S. FDA. At present the future of Red Yeast Rice is uncertain, but what all this legal debate reveals is the rather profound collusion that exists between the private interests and the FDA. If something works great and is safer than expensive drugs, why should it be kept from the public?

Part 2: The Lower the Cholesterol The Higher The Profits

If you watch prime time television these days – even just on occasion – it is nearly impossible to miss the barrage of commercials trying to get you, and the rest of adult America, to sign up for the newest cholesterol lowering medication on the market. These advertisements would have us believe that if we care about our health, and those we love, we should keep our cholesterol low with drugs. The problem is that statins, like many of the drugs being marketed so aggressively to the public these days have dangerous, even fatal side effects.

No longer the exception, side effects and fatalities from drugs have hit astronomical levels. According to the one of the most respected and widely read medical journals in the world – The Journal of American Medicine (JAMA) – approximately 108,000 Americans die each year from the “non-error negative side effects of drugs.” Throughout the entirety of our involvement in Vietnam, 53,000 Americans died. People flooded the streets in protest. The entire nation stood divided. History is still reeling from the sense of horror and disgust the senseless violence of the war brought before popular consciousness. And yet if the the JAMA statistics are accurate, annual fatalities from prescribed medication today are occurring at a rate 14 times higher than those occurring during the Vietnam war. What may be even more disturbing than the statistics themselves, is the fact that there is little, if any open and meaningful discussion occurring about them. When it comes to lowering cholesterol, plenty of sound research exists that calls into question the very concept of high cholesterol causing cardiovascular disease. Low cholesterol levels, in fact, have been shown to increase the risk of stroke and cancer.

Cholesterol, after all, is something our bodies have been equipped to produce plenty of. It is essential for the production of all the steroid hormones and Vitamin D, for maintaining the fluidity of cell membranes, and for transporting and distributing throughout the body fat soluble nutrients like vitamin E, carotenoids, and coenzyme Q10. CoQ10 is a co-factor for energy production in the mitochondria of every cell of our bodies. Since heart muscle has the most mitochondria of any muscle cell in the body (5000 mitochondria per heart muscle cell versus 50 for skeletal muscle), when levels of coq10 drop, the heart is one of the first organs effected. Why then, if statin drugs are known to cause a drop in coenzyme q10, are they being used to prevent heart disease? Unfortunately, because the drug companies are making a killing – both literally and figuratively – selling these drugs, they have every reason to distort or disregard information that contradicts their “lipid hypothesis” of heart disease. The mercurial relationship between drug companies and the “experts” who decide what strategies should be used by Americans to prevent heart disease, was made public by a consumer group recently. The following excerpt from an Associated Press article dated July 17th, 2004, addresses this relationship poignantly:

“Most of the heart disease experts who urged more people to take cholesterol-lowering drugs this week have made money from the companies selling those medicines.”

The article went on to say that the new guidelines these experts drafted would add 7 million more Americans to the 36 million already encouraged to take the pills to lower cholesterol. Whether or not you choose to lower your cholesterol, or investigate in greater depth the validity of doing so, be advised that safe and natural methods of doing so exist.

Moreover, unlike pharmaceutical cholesterol lowering drugs, Red Yeast Rice qua Food has numerous potential side benefits, including but not limited to:

1) Chemopreventive: Red Yeast Rice inhibits colon cancer risk. (1: J Nutr Biochem. 2008 Jul;19(7):448-58. Epub 2007 Sep 14.)

2) Reduced Cardiac and All-Cause Mortality: In 5,000 participants who had already suffered a heart attack, Red Yeast Rice reduced heart attack and death from coronary heart disease 45% relative to placebo groups. Treatment with RYR also decvreated cardiac and total mortality by 30% and 33% respectively. Furthermore, the need for coronary revasculation was reduced by 33%. (1: Am J Cardiol. 2008 Jun 15;101(12):1689-93. Epub 2008 Apr 11.)

3) Bone Formation: Red Yeast Rice exhibits bone building effects in the rabbit model of osteoporosis. (1: Chin Med. 2008 Mar 29;3:4.)

4) Atherosclerosis: Red Yeast Rice inhibits homocysteine-induced endothelial damage (1: Res Commun Mol Pathol Pharmacol. 2006;119(1-6):67-75.).

5) Type 2 diabetes/Coronary Disease: Red Yeast Rice reduces non-fatal heart attack by 63.8%, fatal heart attack by 58.5%, sudden death from coronary heart disease by 26.9% and other coronary heart disease death by 54.4% and all-cause death 44.1% versus placebo in type 2 diabetics with coronary heart disease. (1: J Cardiovasc Pharmacol. 2007 Feb;49(2):81-4.)

6) Fatty Liver: Red Yeast Rice inhibits hepatic steatosis (fatty liver) 78% in the quail experimental model. (1: Res Commun Mol Pathol Pharmacol. 2006;119(1-6):67-75.)

9) C-Reactive Protein: Red Yeast Rice rapidly reduces C-Reactive Protein within 24 hours, e.g. 16.6%, and with increasing efficacy with duration, e.g. 24.8% within 2 weeks. (1: Clin Chim Acta. 2005 Feb;352(1-2):217-24.)

10) Fat Cell Formation: Red Yeast Rice down-regulates the expression of genes that promote fat cell formation. (1: Life Sci. 2004 Nov 12;75(26):3195-203.)

11) Antimutagenic/Antioxidant: Red Yeast Rice exhibits antioxidant and anticancer activities. (1: J Clin Biochem Nutr. 2008 Sep;43(2):118-25.)

12) Neuroprotective: Red Yeast Rice exhibits a protective effect against amyloid beta peptide induced neurotoxicity, indicating its benefit for Alzhemiers and related neurodegenerative disorders. (1: Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2008 Jul;79(5):829-41. Epub 2008 Apr 26).

By: Sayer Ji

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