High cholesterol: A problem or a signal?

How important is controlling cholesterol levels?

At an annual physical more than a decade ago, my doctor noted that people with my LDL cholesterol levels were having heart attacks. He suggested that I start taking a statin drug. I opted to investigate alternatives and I’m glad I did.

The medical community has millions of people on statin drugs to manage cholesterol levels in the blood. But is high cholesterol really the problem or is it a symptom of one or more other problems? 

Cholesterol has several functions within the body. One is to be the “patching plaster” for tissue damage in the blood vessels. Blood vessels will get tiny tears in them. Rather than suffer an on-going loss of blood, the body patches the tear with oxidized cholesterol (plaque) until the damage can be repaired. Of course, plaque buildup will force the heart to pump harder, creating high blood pressure. Too much plaque accumulating in one place can lead to a heart attack. But is the problem due to the cholesterol or the tear in the blood vessel? Would it be more effective to focus on the reason for the tear in the blood vessel?

High cholesterol is also associated with chronic stress. Cholesterol is an essential component of hormone production. Hormones are critical to the body’s normal performance. For example, high stress levels raise adrenaline and cortisol levels in the body. Adrenaline and cortisol are both hormones. So chronic stress requires higher levels of cholesterol, and indeed, elevated levels of cholesterol are associated with chronic stress. Would it be more effective to focus on managing stress rather than limiting cholesterol levels?

Statin drugs reduce the liver’s production of cholesterol. Did you know they also reduce the liver’s production of CoQ10? Both cholesterol and CoQ10 are produced in the same reaction. Deficiency of CoQ10 will lead to weak and sore muscles. Of course, the heart is the most important muscle in the body and a deficiency of CoQ10 will likely lead to heart problems.

Me? I address the reason for high cholesterol levels instead of taking a drug. I never did take a statin drug and my cholesterol levels have been fine.

Are you doing anything to reduce your risk of getting cancer?

Most people I know are not.

Cancer is something they hope they will not get, but they have no program to reduce their chances of getting it.

So if someone shared with you how to minimize your chances of getting cancer, would you be interested?

I believe that my chances of getting cancer are low. I follow a plan that I expect will significantly reduce my risk of getting cancer.

Click here to access a short slide presentation of the plan I follow and the reasons behind it. It’s entitled “Cancer: Reduce your chances of getting it!”

Does your immune system need fixing?

Many of today’s health problems can be resolved by fixing the immune system.

How can you tell if your immune system needs fixing?

Do you have allergies? Allergies are an early warning sign. Allergies are simply the immune system attacking benign foreign matter that it identifies as dangerous to the body.

One of the roles of the immune system is to protect the body from harmful invaders such as viruses, bacteria, parasites, and other organisms. Its mechanism involves identifying harmful invaders and then either destroying them or expelling them from the body. Allergies are the immune system’s efforts to expel substances that are not harmful to the body, but the immune system acts as if they are. The response is coughing, sinus problems, and watering eyes.

If you have allergies or sinus problems, recognize them for what they are—a warning sign that your immune system is overactive. If you don’t fix your immune system when the first signs appear, more serious problems will begin to appear. What are they? Read on.

Do you have one or more autoimmune disorders? Rheumatoid arthritis? Type 2 diabetes? COPD? Fibromyalgia? Multiple Sclerosis?  Over 80 autoimmune disorders have been defined. Autoimmune disorders are the immune system attacking healthy parts of the body, causing tissue damage and inflammation. Eliminating autoimmune disorders would reduce the nation’s health care expenses by a huge amount. Fixing malfunctioning immune systems would dramatically reduce the incidence of autoimmune disorders.

Are you subject to frequent colds or bacterial infections? When you get them, are you slow to get over them? These are signs of an underactive immune system.

You know what else is a sign? Cancer. A properly working immune system will destroy cancer cells before they become a health problem. We all have cancer cells within our bodies. I’ve seen estimates of as many as 90,000 cells at any one time. But an effective immune system eliminates them before they become a problem to our health.

Our nation is suffering from an epidemic of faulty immune systems. Look at the evidence: Allergies are common. Autoimmune disorders are common and becoming more so. And cancer is also common. All were rare 60 years ago.

Sixty years ago, I was 14 years old. I remember only one case of cancer in my parents’ families, both of which were very large. I can’t remember any among my friends or the friends of my parents. I had one friend who had allergies. No one else. I remember thinking of him as fragile. Some of my parents’ friends had arthritis or diabetes, but it was more like one person in thirty among the senior population. Arthritis and diabetes were a problem only with “older” people.  “Autoimmune disorder” was not yet a recognized condition.

What is the cause of this epidemic of faulty immune systems? The immune system is faulty not because it is missing a drug. Would you believe that a nutritional deficiency is the cause? The missing nutrients are those that develop in fruits and vegetables when they are allowed to ripen on the vine, the nutrients that make them taste sweet—polysaccharides. Harvesting fruits and vegetables while they are still green is common, a practice driven primarily to accommodate shipping the produce to distant markets. Produce harvested green are missing these important polysaccharides.

About a dozen polysaccharides play critical roles in the immune system. When they are not available in sufficient quantities, the immune system begins to falter. It may be overactive or it may be underactive. Both conditions can be corrected by providing the body with the missing polysaccharides.

How can you provide your body the nutrients it needs? Eating more fruits and vegetables isn’t the solution. The nutrients you need are no longer in the fruits and vegetables from your grocery store, no matter how many you eat.  The simple answer is to take supplements that provide a broad range of polysaccharides.

I highly recommend VitAloe and Immune 360 from RBC Life. My wife, Dottie, and I take both of them and recommend them to all our friends. The scientists who discovered the importance of polysaccharides in the 1980’s worked for the founder of RBC Life. They were studying the properties of aloe vera when they isolated polysaccharides from the plant and identified them as the key ingredients of aloe vera that give the plant its healing properties.   

Dottie and I have been taking polysaccharide supplements for 13 years. We have no more allergies. We rarely get sick and when we do, we recover quickly. We have no chronic disorder. Dottie takes only Synthroid and T3 for a hypothyroid condition.  I take no drugs, neither prescription nor over-the-counter.

We invite you to join us on our journey to better health.