Image CHAPTER 3 Image

THE HEALTHIEST
ALTERNATIVE TO
CHOLESTEROL-
LOWERING DRUGS

“Lower your cholesterol and prevent heart disease!” Medical doctors, drug manufacturers, and nutritional supplement companies make billions of dollars by browbeating us to believe this statement. But despite the exuberance with which the claim is made, not a single scientific study justifies the myth that “low cholesterol prevents heart disease.” Yet, millions of people swallow the story, along with their cholesterol-lowering drugs (medically known as statins), in a blind attempt to prevent dreaded heart attacks and stroke.

Cholesterol-lowering drug users are unknowingly putting themselves at risk for ghastly side effects, while diminishing their quality of life. In the following pages, you’ll learn the true cause of heart disease, as well as how to prevent it naturally.

You will see that much smarter methods exist for preventing heart disease. In fact, some surprising research shows that these same preventive measures can also enhance libido, while warding off depression and cancer.37 Unlike your doctor’s favorite cholesterol-lowering drug, none of these measures to avoid heart attack and stroke will accidentally poison you.

For over a decade, I’ve been adamant about sharing this message with friends and family. Just ask Mike.…

FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS TAKE
CHOLESTEROL-LOWERING DRUGS

College wrestling was one of my best and worst experiences. On one hand, the arduous workouts and severe dehydration to lose weight nearly drove me to insanity. Having to attend class and learn while under this duress almost drove me to insanity. On the other hand, I was able to learn from some of the nation’s best wrestlers. That’s where I met Mike.

Mike was the team captain. Not only did he have unparalleled talent, but his work ethic and ability to motivate others was unmatched. He was one of the toughest 134-pound wrestlers in the country. But according to medical doctors, Mike was very, very sick. He was so sick that when doctors ran his blood work, they immediately put him on a daily dose of prescription drugs.

Apparently, a routine blood test in health class showed that he was ill with a condition known as hypercholesterolemia. And that’s when doctors insisted on daily statin drug use.

THE ORIGIN OF CHOLESTEROL CRAZINESS

Most people can’t even pronounce hypercholesterolemia. When I first read about it in graduate school, it took me a few times to get it right. My introduction to this “new disease” came from the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP).

Founded in 1985, the NCEP is comprised of a small group of nerds disguised as medical doctors. For more than twenty years, this group has been hell-bent on convincing the other 300 million of us that cholesterol is nothing more than a poison. To add to the craziness, they’re using this myth to get every man, woman, and child hooked on cholesterol-lowering drugs. But they have neglected to look at the science that proves otherwise. They have a valid excuse; most of them are paid by pharmaceutical companies to ignore science while promoting drugs. Among those on the NCEP board, 88 percent are paid directly by the companies that sell statins.38

Thanks to the NCEP, the standards for “normal” cholesterol levels have steadily dropped, making every American sick with hypercholesterolemia. The cholesterol craziness is nothing more than a cheap ploy to turn healthy people into patients. Mike was among the first of my closest friends who fell victim to this craziness.

When we met again at a friend’s wedding, I had not seen Mike for at least six years. I was looking forward to catching up and having a good time. Once the vows were exchanged, the drinking began. Everybody loosened up. Stories were exchanged, and it was just like old times. And “old times” for us always involved some good-natured ribbing. I asked Mike, “Hey bro! Been taking care of your health?”

At only thirty years old, Mike was visibly deflated and pale. His lean, muscular stature had deteriorated to a frumpy, unassuming physique. I wanted to know what happened.

Mike insisted that his health was great. Like many people are able to do, he regurgitated his “total cholesterol” numbers from memory. Everyone within earshot perked up as he recited his so-called great cholesterol level of 180. Others wanted to compare.

My best friend, Pat, moved closer. He was waiting for me to get on my cholesterol soapbox. He knew that some would be entertained and others offended. And he didn’t want to miss my rhetorical attack.

“What the hell does your cholesterol level have to do with your health, Mike?” I asked.

Blank stare. Mike insisted that since the level was less than 200, he was healthy. After all, that’s what his doctors had told him almost ten years earlier in college.

COMMON CHOLESTEROL-LOWERING DRUG SIDE EFFECTS

When pronounced hypercholesterolemic, Mike instantly began eating his daily dose of statins, no questions asked. He had followed this aggressive drug protocol for at least ten years, and it explained his new ill look.

“Stop being a moron,” I told him. “As a collegiate athlete who was at the top of his game and in the best physical shape of his life, how could you have been sick?”

“No, I felt fine. It was a routine blood test in health class. I figured they must know what they were talking about, and I didn’t want to suffer from a heart attack.… But I felt great.”

“Have you been reading anything other than People magazine? Some of the biggest headlines in major media have been showcasing the inherent risk of statins. They are among the deadliest drugs on the market. And to be honest, you look like you’re suffering from side effects. In fact, you defeated me easily in college, but I bet I could drop you now without putting my beer down.”

I had his attention. “You are visibly suffering from a host of side effects like muscle loss, probably due to a severe drop in testosterone. This directly threatens your manhood.”

“Huh?”

“Statins lower testosterone and, at the same time, suffocate libido.” Mike’s eyes got big. His wife gave an embarrassing nod of affirmation.

ED EFFECTS

Writing for the medical journal Family Practice, researchers showed that numerous case reports, review articles, and information from cholesterol-lowering drug users and clinical trials confirm that all classes of cholesterol-lowering drugs prevent patients from performing in the bedroom—or anywhere else, for that matter.39 The technical term for this outcome is drug-induced erectile dysfunction. Since cholesterol is a precursor to testosterone, cholesterol-lowering drugs curb its production greatly. As if it couldn’t get any worse for Mike, these drugs can have plenty of other adverse effects.

HEART FAILURE

Cholesterol-lowering drugs decrease CoQ10 levels within the heart. This essential nutrient serves as an energy-producing molecule and is crucial to proper cardiovascular function. Without it, the heart fails. Congestive heart failure is the outcome. This was highlighted when Merck & Company, maker of the first cholesterol-lowering drug, filed for a patent for profit-pulling Mevacor (lovastatin). But this danger never made mainstream news.

MENTAL EFFECTS

Statins dumb you down. If Mike thought forgetting his wife’s birthday was bad, what about forgetting the names of his children at sixty-five years old? Cholesterol works to ensure the integrity of the “myelin sheath.” This coating within the brain is responsible for encouraging the passage of electrical messages. It makes us smart, and without it, we are bumbling idiots. It’s needed for memory and focus. As the cholesterol-lowering drugs deplete cholesterol, the myelin sheath breaks down and memory deteriorates. If not memory loss, cancer can creep up.

CANCER DANGER

Statins mimic a growth factor responsible for cancer proliferation. The growth factor is known as VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor). VEGF is “cancer fertilizer.” Thus, cholesterol-lowering drug users are creating an environment within their body conducive to cancer growth. The statin drug Vytorin (ezetimibe and simvastatin) recently made the news for its cancer-causing effects.

According to a statement released by the FDA, research showed that the “larger percentage of patients treated with Vytorin were diagnosed with and died from all types of cancer combined, when compared to treatment with a placebo.”40 The same cancer trend can be seen among other statins. But the drug industry works hard to keep this concealed, usually by keeping clinical trials relatively brief.

Drug company–funded studies on cholesterol-lowering drugs typically last no more than five years, although cancer takes much longer to develop. Even heavy smoking will not cause lung cancer within five years, yet it is a well-known fact that smoking leads to lung cancer. As long as the cholesterol-lowering drug trials last only five years, the cancer side effect will continue to fly below the radar. That’s exactly how cancer-causing Vytorin made it past FDA approval.

Prior to its public cancer crisis, Vytorin was approved with flying colors. Yet, as highlighted by the New York Times, “None of the patients took the medicine [Vytorin] for more than twelve weeks, and the trials offered no evidence that it had reduced heart attacks or cardiovascular disease, the goal of any cholesterol drug.”41

As a warning alarm to stockholders, the Wall Street Journal highlighted a relationship between cholesterol-lowering drugs and Lou Gehrig’s disease, known technically as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The FDA and the World Health Organization (WHO) discovered the link when monitoring “adverse event reports.” Among those who reported “drug-induced ALS,” almost a third were taking statins! The national average of ALS is a mere 0.0005 percent.42

I wanted to make it very clear to Mike that nobody cares about side effects—they’re bad for business and easy to hide in drug-funded studies. There are more pressing matters like who Brittany Spears is dating and how many kids Angelina Jolie is going to adopt.

 

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HOW BIG PHARMA HIDES SIDE EFFECTS

Visibly angry, Mike retorted that his doctors would have warned him about these side effects and that the FDA wouldn’t approve dangerous drugs.

“Wishful thinking,” I said. “The FDA has a very low bar for approval. Science has been abandoned for profit. As a drug chemist, I watched ineffective and life-threatening drugs receive approval despite the known risks. Vioxx (rofecoxib) for pain. Tamoxifen for cancer. Paxil (paroxetine) for depression. The list goes on. All had been proven dangerous and ineffective prior to approval. It’s no wonder that prescription drugs kill hundreds of thousands every year.”43

A study published in the British Medical Journal has reported that only 30 percent of statin drug trials reported the number of participants with one or more negative side effects caused by the drug. According to USA Today, the U.S. government is not sending out warnings either. The article stated: “Statins have killed and injured more people than the government has acknowledged.”44

“Your trust is misplaced. The FDA isn’t watching out for you, bro. I am. And trust me, Lipitor sucks.”

Regardless of its ability to drop total cholesterol, Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium) won’t stop heart disease. In a three-and-a-third-year study, the drug reduced the rate of heart attacks from 3 percent to a whopping 2 percent. That means out of one hundred people taking Lipitor, only one person might benefit. All other statin drug trials show the same trend.45

Researchers from Therapeutic Initiatives performed an analysis of five major statin drug trials and pooled all the data. Known by their acronyms, the trials were PROSPER, ALLHAT-LLT, ASCOT-LLA, AFCAPS, and WOSCOPS. In the pooled data of these trials, statin drugs reduced the risk of death by 0.3 percent among those who showed no signs of having cardiovascular disease (primary prevention).”46

With respect to heart attack and stroke, the five combined studies showed that statins prevented these events by a mere 1.4 percent. Using the data from other clinical trials like LIPS, PROSPER, GREASE, and HPS, an analysis showed that cholesterol-lowering drug use reduced death by a mere 1.8 percent among those who showed signs of having cardiovascular disease (secondary prevention).

“So what is cholesterol, and what does it have to do with heart disease? What can I do to avoid it?” Mike was now thinking. I could tell he was anxious to get off his statin drug.

THE FIRST STEP TO AVOIDING HEART DISEASE

“The absolute first step to avoiding heart disease,” I told him, “is to get off your drugs and let your cholesterol rise to where it belongs, which is usually far above 200. And when it does, don’t freak out. You’re not sick. That number 200 was invented by the NCEP to convert a young, vibrantly healthy college jock into a patient. Studies show that the higher our cholesterol, the longer we live!”

The Italians don’t die from “high” cholesterol. In fact, the higher it is, the healthier they are. Monitoring three thousand Italians over three years, research published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society showed that elderly people with low total cholesterol levels (less than 189 mg/dL) were at higher risk of dying than those with cholesterol levels from 276 to 417 mg/dL!47 Other powerful evidence exists to support this.

The Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that as people aged, death rates increased by 14 percent for every one-point drop in total cholesterol levels. Cadaver studies also prove this.48 Among those who die from a heart attack, more than half have low cholesterol. This explains why statin drugs fail to increase lifespan despite their ability to drop total cholesterol levels. There is no association between cholesterol lowering (LDL-cholesterol or otherwise) and the occurrence of heart disease.

Such risks are usually hidden from doctors and the media. Using clever techniques, Big Pharma hires ghostwriters to cleverly weave positive drug stories.

HOW TO MAKE STATIN DRUGS LOOK GOOD

Statins have life-threatening side effects and high cholesterol is protective, not detrimental. These cold hard facts are usually buried in an avalanche of deceit. This is Big Pharma’s dirty secret. The companies work relentlessly to protect the secret with ghostwriting.

Ghostwriting is akin to giving an old, beat-up car a new paint job. It makes something look better than it really is. Officially, ghostwriting is the scandalous act of paying writers to hype drug benefits, while concealing side effects, and then paying prestigious doctors to put their names on the report. Once done, the paper is published in medical journals to sway doctors into heavy prescribing habits.

Like a good body shop, the best ghostwriters can make anything in the drug business look great. There are two tricks of the ghostwriting trade that you must be made aware of: statistical contortionism and checkbook science. Understanding both of these will help you thwart drug hype in the headlines—and stay alive.

NUMBER ILLUSIONS

Statistical contortionism is simply number illusions. It uses percentages to exaggerate drug benefits. For instance, if drug XYZ led to a 3 percent reduction in the risk of a given medical complication (like heart attack), and the placebo group (those who took a sugar pill instead) experienced a 1 percent risk reduction, the absolute difference is merely 2 percent. This doesn’t make for great news or drug sales. Enter the contortionists.

To make the difference look better than it is, ghostwriters use the percentage difference, rather than the absolute difference in percentage—confusing I know. Street magician David Blaine would be proud. Watch closely, because you’ve already missed the illusion.

To get the percentage difference, divide 1 by 3 (percentages from above) then multiply the answer by 100. You get 33 percent. This is called “relative risk reduction.” Technically, drug XYZ reduced the relative risk of heart attack by 33 percent. Presto! You’ve turned bland numbers into some serious profit-pullers.

As a corporate drug pusher, what would you cite to doctors, journalists, and patients—the absolute difference of 2 percent or the relative risk reduction of 33 percent? Relative risk reduction is always used in ghost-writing and in the headlines, especially when it comes to cholesterol-lowering drugs. Since most people can’t balance a checkbook, the mathematical illusion is easy to disguise as science.

Commenting on the JUPITER study, Mark Hlatky, MD, of Stanford told the New England Journal of Medicine that “absolute differences in risk are more clinically important than relative reductions in risk in deciding whether to recommend drug therapy, since the absolute benefits of treatment must be large enough to justify the associated risks and costs.”51

CHECKBOOK SCIENCE

The deceit doesn’t stop with statistical contortionists. Money can’t buy love, but it can buy research. Ghostwriters also rely upon checkbook science.

Leveraging their financial power, drug companies simply pay for the best research that money can buy. They structure the protocol designed to study whether or not a drug is safe, and they design their own clinical trials. They choose the investigators (from academics and government institutions) and in many instances are involved in the collation, interpretation, and reporting of data.52 This allows them to hype benefits while concealing risk. Real scientific, huh? According to one estimate, 75 percent of the clinical trials published in top medical journals—like The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association—are paid for by Big Pharma.53

Ghostwriting has become so widespread that leading editors have voiced their opinions publicly. Commenting on the false publication, the deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association insisted, “This is all about bypassing science. Medicine is becoming a sort of Cloud Cuckoo Land, where doctors don’t know what papers they can trust in the journals, and the public doesn’t want to believe. If you’re getting a lot of money from a corporate sponsor, it’s easy to get the impression that you’ll get even more for future research if you don’t write up the negative results.”54 This style of research has torn the fabric of the scientific method by masquerading as science, but in reality it’s nothing more than a dirty sales ploy that puts a patient’s life at risk. Yet, the deceptive writing is the primary source of information for medical doctors.

At this point Mike was convinced. He hadn’t been feeling well. His muscles had all but evaporated, and his libido was at rock bottom. Like so many others in his position, he was ready for change. From that point on, Mike never took another statin drug.

There were still more lifesaving facts for Mike to learn, but we had to get back to the wedding. Staying in touch, I eventually taught him the truth about cholesterol, pointed out the real artery butchers, and showed him how to obtain the best alternatives to cholesterol-lowering drugs.

CHOLESTEROL FACTS YOUR DOCTOR DOESN’T KNOW

Cholesterol is not a poison.

Cholesterol is the most important molecule in the body, next to water. First and foremost, the body uses cholesterol to manufacture steroids, or cortisone-like hormones, including the sex hormones like testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. Cholesterol helps break down food into essential nutrients. Working in unison with the liver, it produces bile acids. These acids are essential for digestion of fats and ridding the body of waste. Cholesterol acts to interlock “lipid molecules,” which stabilize cell membranes. Therefore, it is a vital building block for all bodily tissues.

Lowering cholesterol causes the body to fall apart. To illustrate, imagine that your house represents your body and the nails holding it together, cholesterol. Now start pulling just a few nails out of the house. What happens? The house turns into a pile of rubble. The same is true for the body.

Cholesterol keeps your immune system working hard. It’s crucial for protecting you from biological nasties like bacteria and viruses. Once the body is invaded by foreigners, cholesterol can bind to and inactivate the nasties and then escort them out of the body. Even the potent MRSA strain of Staphylococcus bacteria has been shown to be no match for LDL-cholesterol.

THE REAL ARTERY BUTCHERS

You don’t need a medical degree to understand the real cause of heart disease and how to prevent it. The anatomy of our arteries is as simple as a ham sandwich. To understand how arteries can be damaged, you only need to know a few parts. Therefore, if you know how to make a ham sandwich, you can learn how to avoid heart disease, even if you are eight years old.

The spaghetti noodles covering the heart are coronary arteries. They’re important because they help deliver nutrients and blood throughout the body. They connect 100,000 miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries. And they’re most susceptible to damage due to the mechanical stress they undergo. (Think racing heartbeat.)

Unlike spaghetti, coronary arteries are made up of muscle, sandwiched between two structural layers, one facing the bloodstream and one outside. Muscle is the ham, and bread the structural layer. Stupidly simple, but it can get more complicated, like boiling water.

Heart disease can set in when the bread—the innermost structural layer that faces the bloodstream—gets disturbed or butchered. This layer is known as the intima, and it’s made up of collagen and a specialized set of cells known as endothelial cells. Both are sensitive to a host of disturbances that can give way to coronary artery damage.

It’s well known that tobacco smoke butchers arteries. Another notorious artery butcher is homocysteine. When the coronary arteries undergo mechanical stress, the structural layer is stretched and exposed to the artery-scarring compound floating in the blood, allowing for increased chance of damage. As with an open-reel fishing rod gone bad, tangling among collagen ensues.

Initially, collagen tangling shows up as endothelial dysfunction, which, like erectile dysfunction, prevents the coronary arteries from expanding and contracting when needed. You can visualize this by comparing the arteries to tangled kite string.

When the delivery of oxygen and nutrients is disturbed, collagen tangling occurs. It’s like suffocation in slow motion. But your body works to correct this. Using a complex chemical cascade, dietary vitamin C (from acerola) replenishes and repairs tangled collagen. But this protection doesn’t last forever. If the tangling goes unchecked, rampant inflammation occurs.

Some people call inflammation “plaque” because of its hardened nature. The name “atherosclerosis” (sometimes used in place of heart disease) was derived from that concept of hardening. The term combines two Greek words, athere (porridge) and sclerosis (hardening). In reality, atherosclerosis is merely Nature’s Band-Aid.

Atherosclerosis is not a death sentence. Nature’s Band-Aid does not become so inflamed and swollen that it shrinks the bloodstream to a pinpoint. You can take vitamin C to protect against collagen entanglement, but healthy arteries have the ability to accommodate for inflammation by “relaxing,” or dilating. This ensures that blood flow continues without interruption. This protection is primarily dependent on the short-lived molecule known as nitric oxide, or NO.

Robert F. Furchgott, PhD, Louis J. Ignarro, PhD, and Ferid Murad, MD, PhD, received the Nobel Prize for the paramount discovery concerning nitric oxide. Supplementation with L-arginine and grape-seed extract can help ensure the healthy production of NO, and the subsequent relaxing and dilation of arteries when needed.

Most heart attacks and strokes occur when Nature’s Band-Aid ruptures. The rupturing triggers the emergence of a blood clot (thrombus). The combination of narrow arteries and a blood clot completes the blockage. This prevents blood from reaching downstream to the heart or brain, or both. This condition is known as “ischemia.” A heart attack or stroke is the outcome when the heart or brain is deprived of blood and oxygen.

STOPPING THE NUMBER-ONE ARTERY BUTCHER

The entire cycle leading to premature heart attack and stroke can be prevented—or at least slowed. To do this, you need to reduce or eliminate the artery butchers from the blood. Smokers can start now by tossing the cigarette. The next place to start is by avoiding large amounts of homocysteine. Outside of quitting smoking, that is the best place to start.

Homocysteine is a natural by-product of amino acid metabolism in the body. Among healthy individuals, it’s quickly processed into harmless methionine. But if homocysteine isn’t biochemically converted, it floats in the bloodstream and wreaks havoc on the cardiovascular system.

Famed chemist Kilmer McCully, MD, made the homocysteine and heart disease connection in the early 1990s while at Harvard. He found that homocysteine had a high affinity for collagen, a key component of arteries. In excess (greater than 16 μmol/l), homocysteine “sinks its claws” into coronary arteries. As time passes, it can set off the entire heart-disease cascade, eventually culminating in the formation of Nature’s Band-Aid, inflammation.

Mckully’s remedy was readily accessible folic acid. He found that folic acid declaws homocysteine by converting it into harmless methionine. He was all but shunned by peers who held tight to the cholesterol hypothesis. But today, some key studies have confirmed his findings, while the cholesterol hypothesis is becoming a mainstream pastime.

In 2006, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology highlighted a review of all previous studies done on homocysteine levels and risk for heart disease. Their conclusion was that a “plethora of studies” demonstrate “plausible mechanisms” that implicate elevated homocysteine in promoting heart disease, leading to attack and stroke.55

Harvard researchers writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that women could cut their risk of heart disease by half with daily consumption of 500 milligrams of folic acid and other B vitamins. Men can expect to have the same benefit.56

Other researchers evaluated homocysteine studies recently in the British Medical Journal. In their review of the clinical trials involving folic acid and the lowering of homocysteine, they showed that even a small 3 μmol/l drop in homocysteine (achievable with 0.8 milligrams a day of folic acid) lowers the risk of myocardial infarction by 15 percent and stroke by 24 percent. Their powerful conclusion: “We therefore take the view that the evidence is now sufficient to justify action on lowering homocysteine concentrations.”57

Another study done, performed in China, gives more evidence of folic acids benefits. The researchers found that men who took a multivitamin with folic acid and other B-vitamins daily were 60 percent less likely to die of stroke.58

To this day, McCully’s findings show that the simple act of ensuring folic acid intake may ward off heart disease. But that’s not as easy to achieve as you might think. Many of us take part in lifestyle habits that can lead to folic-acid deficiency.

There are three main reasons that you might have increased levels of homocysteine or be deficient in folic acid: you’re not eating your folic acid–rich spinach and leafy vegetables; you’re drinking too much folic acid–depleting wine, or you are swallowing folic acid–depleting drugs like over-the-counter pain relievers, birth control pills, antipsychotics, anticonvulsants, or antidiabetic meds. Taking part in any of these habits makes proper folic-acid supplementation (at least 400 micrograms per day from natural sources that also include vitamin B12) essential for keeping homocysteine levels low and heart disease at bay.

That heart disease is the result of a nutrient deficiency is modern medicine’s biggest dilemma. Despite the rampant increase in heart attack and stroke, the drug industry is powerless in helping the world overcome the pandemic—outside of emergency medicine, of course. This is the primary reason that many doctors aren’t talking about homocysteine. They simply don’t have a drug to treat it. But Whole Foods does.

THE OVER-THE-COUNTER NATURAL CURE TO ARTERY BUTCHERS

If you shop at Whole Paycheck (Whole Foods) or any other organic grocery store, lowering homocysteine is easy. Buy folic acid. But you’ll want to choose your source with unusual care. Not all are created equal. While one source can be lifesaving, the other might threaten it.

Folic acid is usually purchased in pill form. These supplements can be bought for as low as 0.24 cents per month. But you’ll be paying for a synthetic copycat, a Franken-Chemical of sorts. In 1941, the chemical manufacturer American Cyanamid (now a division of Wyeth pharmaceuticals) learned to make a version of folic acid in their lab to profit from the growing deficiency. Ever since, pharmaceutical sleight of hand has replaced the food source folic acid with its chemical cousin, which is proving inferior. The difference is stark, as can be seen by increased cancer rates among populations being force fed the Franken-Chemical via fortification programs (dumping the copycat into every day foods like cereals and grains).59

The forgotten source of nutritive folic acid is brewer’s yeast, sometimes called nutritional yeast. In 1931, it was discovered to be a potent cure to anemia. The high content of folic acid proved to be one of the corrective sources. But over time, it’s been learned that the true benefits of the acid come from the entire spectrum of supporting nutrients (like vitamin B12, selenium, and more), which together make up an infinite amount of complex and dynamic, healthy responses in the body. Today, brewer’s yeast is also the best way to adhere to nutrient logic for declawing artery butchers like homocysteine.

Monthly cost will range from $7 to $20. Lewis Labs sells a 100 percent natural brewer’s yeast at Whole Foods and many other organic grocers. Manufactured under FDA-approved good manufacturing practices, Lewis Labs brewer’s yeast has no additives, adulterants, or excess fillers, based on my independent lab analysis. This can be verified with the certificate of analysis found at my website, www.overthecounternaturalcures.com

The best time to take folic acid is with a meal. This is a simple step to ensure that your body uses folic acid to lower homocysteine. Conversely, if you are taking high doses of folic acid–depleting drugs, you are negating the benefits of its supplementation. While folic acid may be plentiful in the bloodstream, drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen prevent it from being used once delivered.

Not much to worry about in the way of nutritive folic acid toxicity. Unlike with statins, you won’t have to undergo any scary “enzyme tests” to measure whether or not you’re being accidentally poisoned. While the toxicity of statins leads to liver failure, as seen by the spilling of various enzymes into the blood, food-source folic acid is about as toxic as water.

MIKE RECOVERS, AND SO CAN YOU

Abstaining from statins and supplementing folic acid, Mike instantly felt better. I was quick to remind him that folic acid wasn’t the silver bullet for heart disease. There are plenty of other artery butchers to watch out for, such as excess sugar and even foreign bacteria and viruses. To ensure total cardiovascular health, he combined his daily intake with two to five teaspoons of acerola (I recommend Now Foods 4:1 Extract Powder) to ensure adequate vitamin C and followed the simple lifestyle habits discussed in chapter 11.

As his cholesterol rose back to natural, healthier levels, Mike was reminded of what being healthy felt like. Mornings were met with vibrant energy and mental clarity. His muscles began to reemerge and, thanks to getting his libido back, he started chasing his wife around the bedroom. He also felt good knowing that, as an added benefit of taking folic acid, he was preventing depression and cancer—a welcome side effect of nutritive folic acid use. Today, despite having a total cholesterol level of well over 200, Mike is in the best shape of his life, with no signs of the inflammation of heart disease!

Think twice about cholesterol-lowering drugs. Otherwise, face the outcomes of proven side effects.