Reducing high cholesterol levels may do more than protect your heart –it can also make blood sugar easier to manage—reports a research team from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. In their study, a group of diabetic mice were given a compound that reduced cholesterol production in their blood. They found that the mice’s blood sugar dramatically improved, without changes to their diet.

The researchers hypothesize that lowering cholesterol helps reduce inflammation –the underlying cause of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.  They add that diabetics should aim to aggressively treat their cholesterol in order to better control blood sugar.

A 21-day plan for eliminating type 2 diabetes…

Natural method to lower cholesterol…

To Your Health,
Jodi Knapp

Those wondering what they should eat to lower their blood pressure may be surprised that the answer may be “nothing,” according to a research team from the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute. In a new study, they found that periodically fasting boosts overall heart health by reducing cholesterol and blood pressure.

In this study, a group of volunteers were assigned to fast for 24 consecutive hours. They found that the single-day fast was enough to significantly improve cardiovascular disease risk factors like hypertension, triglycerides and “bad” LDL cholesterol. The researchers add, however, that the long-term health effects of fasting have not been studied as of yet.

Here’s what else you can do to reduce your blood pressure naturally…

For treating cholesterol problems, Western doctors prescribe statins as an overwhelming majority to any other treatment plan.  That is because they work on each element of the cholesterol panel- HDL, LDL, and triglycerides.

In order for drugs to work, they must be broken down and absorbed into the body. The process by which this happens is the work of special enzymes.

In the Grapefruit Effect, the enzymes that statins need to do their job are blocked by bergamot in, which is a chemical in grapefruit.  It is called a furanocoumarin.

Move over LDL, there’s a new cholesterol-class in town that should appear on every health conscious person’s radar screen. The AHA recently released the fruits of a massive research review involving 500 heart-health studies from the last 3 decades. The bottom line? Triglycerides –a little-known, but important type of blood fat—is just as important for healthy hearts as well-known HDL and LDL cholesterol. Triglycerides above 200mg/dl significantly ups your odds of suffering from a heart attack or stroke.

The AHA report also highlighted the importance of lifestyle as an effective treatment to fight triglycerides naturally. They note that cutting sugar intake to less than 150 g per day is an important first step towards triglyceride reduction. Having a healthy BMI, exercising daily and cutting saturated fat are also important, the AHA adds. Their research shows that making these relatively minor lifestyle changes alone is enough to cut triglycerides in half.

Learn other natural ways to combat cholesterol and triglycerides…

Lower blood pressure naturally…

An apple a day may keep the cardiologist away, according to a research study conducted by Florida State University Scientists. In this USDA-funded study, a group of women were asked to eat 75 g of dried apples per day. At the end of the 6-month follow up period, the apples dropped “bad” LDL cholesterol by 23% –comparable to cholesterol-lowering prescription medications like Lipitor.

The apple’s benefits went further than a simple reduction in cholesterol. Serial apple eaters found themselves with significantly lower levels of the pro-inflammatory protein CRP. The researchers state that the soluble fiber in the apples were likely responsible for the dramatic drop in bad cholesterol. Apples are also an abundant source of antioxidants, which also likely contributed to the reduction in inflammation that the subject’s experienced.

Despite contributing an estimated 250 calories to the subject’s diet, the apples didn’t add to the volunteer’s waistline. In fact, each apple-eater lost an average of 3 pounds –even though they didn’t purposefully cut calories.

Learn more “tricks” to fight cholesterol in a flash…

We have gotten some really great comments when we publish recipes, so to continue that vibe, today I will share Julie’s mini-quiche recipe.

So many times we get comments from people trying to watch their cholesterol or on their weight loss journey who are at a loss for good, satisfying foods.  Breakfast seems to be one of the biggest problems for a lot of folks.

Julie, one of my Team Members, solves this problem by taking traditional recipes and tweaking them a bit to make them low fat, low sodium, or low-cal.

The quiche recipe she is modifying comes really from her mother, who apparently used to make it for the grandkids as a way to get them to eat their broccoli, which they hate.

According to a study led by Dr. Jinesh Kochar, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and presented at the American Heart Association conference in Atlanta, eating whole grain cereal in the morning lowers the risk of hypertension up to 25%.

The study included 13,368 males who did not have high blood pressure at the beginning of the study. 16 years later, almost half of them, 7,267 men, had developed hypertension.

The men were then separated into four groups based on how many bowls of whole grain cereal they ate per week. Eating cereal once a week lowed the risk of hypertension 8% but eating cereal more than seven times per week lowered the risk 25%.

More info on lowering high blood pressure naturally…

More info on lowering cholesterol naturally…

When a reader brought this point up we originally thought he was talking about Chai tea. But No! He asked about the benefits of chia seed and its use in improving cholesterol levels.

As I looked into it, I found an enormous amount of research (and a ton of it was credible) to indicate this little seed is quite miraculous.

This seed was made popular by the Chia Pet people who sold it as a fun past-time for kids and adults, as it was used to grow a little garden on the outside of a clay animal, head, or other shape.

So back to the reader inquiries we go with today’s article. We had a lot of readers ask about a condition called Atrial Fibrillation. Most of the questions related to how to stop or prevent it.

What is Atrial Fibrillation (AF)?

A recent study including more than 520,000 Europeans, and published in the journal “Gut” shows that high HDL (“good cholesterol”) drastically decreases the risk of bowel cancer. A simple rise of only 16.6 mg/dl in HDL reduced bowel cancer risk 22%.

Although the study didn’t check other types of cancer, the results indicate cholesterol may affect other types as well. This shows how important it is to lower “bad cholesterol” and raise “good cholesterol”.

Lower cholesterol

Lower blood pressure