Simply raise your HDL

By Bob Livingston

The cholesterol bogy has been used for several decades to terrify a whole population. For many years, cholesterol levels were considered the ultimate measure of health and fitness in America. Suppressing cholesterol is not about health. It's about making money, and the people who created the cholesterol myth did so to make trillions of dollars — and they are making it sure as the sun came up this morning. I have been telling my readers for many years that high cholesterol and a bad ratio of HDL and LDL is not in itself bad health. It is only a marker of a health problem. Suppressing cholesterol in total is like placing something over your car's oil change light to prevent the motor from failing. This is pitiful nonsense, but you know literally millions of people along with their doctors are thoroughly indoctrinated with this myth. People are paying $600 a month for statin drugs (to lower cholesterol) that are offending their health far more than elevated cholesterol. I feel sure that a lot of old folks are using their grocery money to buy these drugs despite what Medicare will pay. If you want to protect your heart, ignore the advice to drive your total cholesterol down to nothing. This removes the benefits cholesterol has for your brain and longevity, and destroys the protective effect of HDL. The famous Framingham Heart Study says that simply raising your HDL lowers your risk of heart attack down to less than 1 percent for those with the highest HDL. This smallest of the lipoproteins is called such because HDL is made up of a lipid coating that has inside of it a protein called apolipoprotein A1 (ApoA1). Scientists, if not actual medical doctors, are at least beginning to recognize the power of HDL's components to protect the heart regardless of LDL level or any other nonsense. If you look at the largest study of its kind at the time, the AMORIS (Apolipoprotein-related MOrtality RISk) study, published in that most prestigious of all mainstream health journals, The Lancet, and funded by none other than a pharmaceutical itself, AstraZeneca, you will see that they admit lowering cholesterol in general is not helpful in preventing heart attacks, but that high "ApoA1 had a protective function both in men and women." Of course this was not reported on at the time because it doesn't coincide with the desire to sell cholesterol lowering drugs. However it does reveal that you want to get your body to build more apolipoprotein A1 so that you can protect your health with higher HDL cholesterol. The two best ways I know of to raise HDL are not with any drug created in a lab by mankind. They are with the powerful herbs Ashwaghanda and Kalonji — which is also called black cumin seed oil, or "Golden Oil." Ashwaganda is an ancient Indian herb (also known by its Latin name Withania somnifera) that will raise HDL. Several clinical trials have shown that using just 250 milligrams twice daily, you can get significant improvements along with very beneficial changes in blood biochemistry, including triglycerides down 11.7 percent, LDL cholesterol down 17.4 percent and HDL (good) cholesterol up 17.3 percent. These results suggest that the regular intake of Ashwaganda will increase your life expectancy by reducing those risk factors associated with chronic issues and heart inflammation and stress. Ashwagandha leaf extract might also be labeled Indian ginseng or winter cherry. It's an adaptogen, meaning that it gives you a general sense of well-being, but also, your body uses it only as needed, so you can take up to 500 mg twice a day as a supplement. Dried ashwagandha root powder should be organic and if you add it to tea just add some honey for taste. You can also use Golden Oil (Nigella sativa or black cumin seed extract) to increase HDL rapidly. The pods of the Nigella sativa plant, known as kalonji in Southeast Asia and Golden Oil in the Middle East, are the source of black seeds. In several different studies, black seed extract raised HDL from 44 to an astonishing 80 in just 20 weeks. In another clinical trial, 92 people took just 1 gram a day for 12 weeks and it greatly enhanced their HDL. But when they got 2 grams a day, the results multiplied. "Patients ingested 2 g/day NS displayed a significant decline in total cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL-c, and a significant elevation in HDL-c..." You can get golden oil as a cold-pressed oil of the seeds, and you can certainly use the oil in your cooking and get some every day that way. However I prefer the capsules because you will know the potency and purity when you get it from a reputable source, and you know the dose you are getting. For example, golden oil has more benefits to the immune system and total body health than I ever knew, but discovering that 2 grams a day has an increased beneficial effect for HDL means I want to make sure I get that amount each day.