The Safe Way to Prevent Heart Disease By Shane Ellison

High cholesterol leads to heart disease, right?
Wrong!
Heart disease is not a disease of high cholesterol. If cholesterol were the culprit, this ubiquitous substance would clog up the entire 100,000 miles of adult veins, arteries and capillaries. Instead, 90 percent of heart disease cases are caused by the narrowing of the spaghetti-sized coronary arteries. The rest of the arteries, veins and capillaries that nourish the body remain perfectly healthy, despite being rich in cholesterol and fat. This observation alone renders the cholesterol theory of heart disease obsolete.
Yet the medical system pushes cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins as the answer to a nonexistent problem-even though the treatment can be worse than the disease.
As a former drug chemist, I saw first-hand how drug side effects are hidden from patients and doctors by Big Pharma. Statins serve as poignant examples of how these side effects may actually cause more damage than they prevent.
1. Cholesterol-lowering drugs decrease CoQ10 levels within the heart. This essential energy-producing molecule is crucial to proper cardiovascular function. Without it, you can develop congestive heart failure -- the heart literally fails.
2. Cholesterol-lowering drugs can destroy memory. 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 is needed for memory and focus. As the cholesterol-lowering drugs deplete cholesterol, the myelin sheath breaks down and memory deteriorates.
3. Cholesterol-lowering drugs can increase the risk of cancer. Studies show they mimic a growth factor responsible for cancer's proliferation. The growth factor is known as VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor). VEGF is "cancer fertilizer." Thus, cholesterol-lowering drugs create an environment within the user's body conducive to cancer growth.
The fact that cholesterol-lowering drugs can potentially cause cancer will never be mainstream. Drug company-funded studies are conveniently short in nature, typically five years or less, while it usually takes decades for cancer to develop. Even heavy smoking will not cause lung cancer within five years. As long as the cholesterol-lowering drug trials last only five years, this side effect will continue to fly below the radar. A coincidence?
Side effects of cholesterol-lowering drugs are discounted by medical doctors because they are usually hidden by drug companies who pay for the study. Consider: The British Medical Journal has reported that only 30 percent of statin drug trials have 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. They reported, "Statins have killed and injured more people than the government has acknowledged."
Fortunately, we don't need to rely on cholesterol-lowering drugs to prevent heart disease. Studies show that cholesterol does not play a role in this pandemic killer. In fact, cholesterol appears to increase lifespan. You will have to wrestle with this -- it is the antithesis of what drug companies and medical doctors promote. But it's true nonetheless. Supporting the conclusions of many other studies, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society showed that elderly individuals 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.
Science has made great strides in identifying the true cause of heart disease: inflammation. Inflammation leading to heart disease is typically the result of nutritional deficiencies and poor lifestyle habits. Preventing inflammation by adhering to proper nutrition is working to prevent heart disease.
A wildly effective way to prevent inflammation is to increase your sensitivity to the fat-storing hormone known as insulin. Aside from cinnamon (1-5 g daily), exposure to sunlight and drinking green tea, other methods of increasing insulin sensitivity exist:
1. Interval training is among the best techniques for increasing insulin sensitivity and lowering inflammation. Short bouts of resistance training followed by rest cause the muscles to absorb insulin from the blood stream. As an added benefit, the body produces anti-inflammatory molecules known as cytokines in response to interval training.
2. Nutritional supplementation with magnesium (400 mg daily) also increases insulin sensitivity. A magnesium deficiency inhibits insulin from escorting glucose out of the bloodstream into muscles. The end result is insulin resistance and an increased risk of heart attack. Magnesium aspartate is the best-absorbed form of magnesium.
3. Tannic acid from the banaba leaf mimics the actions of insulin by eliciting glucose transport from the blood stream into muscle. The safe and effective blood-sugar-lowering effect of tannic acid has caught the attention of Big Pharma. Many drug companies are working rigorously to create a synthetic knock-off in order to use it as an insulin-sensitizing agent among diabetics.
Increasing insulin sensitivity has become the absolute hottest area of research. Not only does it suggest a single way of ameliorating heart disease, but also a host of other diseases caused by inflammation. These include but are not limited to diabetes, cancer and even Alzheimer's.
Instead of dosing patients up with a handful of drugs to treat a handful of diseases, increasing insulin sensitivity is one remedy for all three - and allows us to avoid the hidden dangers of cholesterol-lowering drugs!
[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison is known as "The People's Chemist." He holds a Master's degree in organic chemistry and has first-hand industry experience with drug research, design and synthesis. He is the author of Health Myths Exposed and The Hidden Truth About Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs. Get his FREE Life-Saving Health Briefs here...]