Hyperlipidemia is an umbrella term for those conditions characterized by an excessive amount of fats or lipids in the blood. But as a practical matter, for most patients hyperlipidemia is just the medical term for high cholesterol.
Conventional medicine has long advocated that high cholesterol causes heart disease – the biggest killer in advanced countries. This has given rise to an entire industry of low-fat food products as well as cholesterol-lowering drugs, which are among the most widely prescribed medicines in the world. Unfortunately for those businesses, the connection is controversial at best – and at worst, there’s no connection at all. In fact, in biological medicine we see both the problem and the solution differently.
Hyperlipidemia is essentially a disturbance of the body’s ability to metabolize fats. Conventional medicine describes the condition as an epidemic and thus an alarming danger in today’s society, and prescribes to almost every sufferer a category of drugs known as statins, which are now routinely given to men in the USA as a preventative measure – that is, they don’t even have high cholesterol.
Statins were designed to interfere with the production of cholesterol in the liver and have since come to be touted as the primary answer to treating hyperlipidemia. The problem with statins, however, is that they create side effects that can be as dangerous as the disease they were meant to treat.
Approaching the problem of hyperlipidemia or high cholesterol holistically, we by contrast look to the most fundamental issues influencing the patient’s lipid levels. Problems metabolizing fats often stem from disturbances in the digestive tract and its consequent inability to absorb lipids properly.
The biological approach is therefore to start with the basics: nutrition and lifestyle. Unhealthy amounts of saturated fats most definitely trigger the overproduction of cholesterol. So we first address diet. Establishing a strict plan for healthier, low-fat nutritional practices underpins our recovery plan. But we also improve the digestion to resolve the issue of lipid absorption.
For patients coming to us after having been on statins for a number of years, we first address malnutrition by creating a stringent dietary regimen, including orthomolecular remedies, and then we attempt to gradually wean them off of the drugs they were prescribed.
The side effects of statin use, especially over a long period of time, are actually quite eye-opening. Among them: adverse liver function, damage to muscle tissue, memory loss, depression and peripheral neuropathy, to name a few. Make no mistake about it, these types of medications take their toll on the body, at times causing serious and potentially dangerous reactions.
Being on statins forever is not the answer. That is why we stress a long term lifestyle change, better nutritional choices, and a healthy exercise regime. Side effect free, our program is designed to completely eliminate the need for any drugs or medications. And our results have been incredibly positive, with many of our patients able to stop taking their prescribed statins and still maintain acceptable cholesterol levels.