This is part 2 of a 2-part article series on reducing high cholesterol.
So far, we've talked about getting outside, getting natural sunlight on your skin, getting daily exercise, and choosing foods that promote health -- that is, the natural, raw, live foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and even soy products. Definitely get some sprouts into your diet, get some supergreens into your diet, eat some microalgae like chlorella and spirulina, take the Alive! Whole Food Energizer supplement if you're in a pinch. Take some seaweed herbal products, or just eat some seaweed as part of your diet. You can have dulse or kelp or bladderwrack, or just sushi. This is the way to get healthy foods into your diet that will automatically help balance your cholesterol levels.
If you're doing all of these things, and you're drinking plenty of water to make sure you're hydrated at the same time, then there are other things you can do that are allopathic in nature to accelerate the balancing of your cholesterol levels. These would be things that would help counteract bad cholesterol, that go above and beyond basic nutrition. These are things like blueberries, which we now know will lower cholesterol even more dramatically than statin drugs, without any negative side effects whatsoever. A cup of blueberries a day is more effective than any statin drug in lowering LDL cholesterol. Garlic is also helpful for reducing cholesterol: if you eat a lot of raw garlic, you are not only a brave person, but you will also experience dramatically lower cholesterol levels. You could cook garlic, put it in your foods, or bake it and still get a lot of benefit from it.
Don't be a fool and start buying deodorized garlic supplements, because if they've taken the odor out of the garlic, they've taken all the nutrients out that lower cholesterol in the first place. It's like buying garlic-free garlic. Why would you want to do that? It doesn't make any sense. But people go out and buy this odorless garlic supplement because they think they're getting some health benefit from it. What you want to do is grow your own garlic in your garden and eat it -- and if you can eat it raw, all the better. Personally, I have a hard time eating raw garlic, but my cholesterol is already at a very healthy level with an LDL cholesterol of 67, so I don't have to worry about eating garlic.
My cholesterol level has achieved this number just from pursuing the lifestyle that I'm describing to you right now -- getting plenty of sunshine, eating fruits and vegetables, avoiding hydrogenated oils, and of course avoiding fried foods. This is another thing that is extremely important if you want to have a healthy cardiovascular system. So, I hope I'm painting a picture here for what it takes to have a healthy cardiovascular system and automatically achieve low LDL cholesterol levels.
But a lot of times when I'm explaining this to people, they might stop me and say, Hey, wait a minute, Mike -- that wasn't the question I was asking you. What I was really asking you is: Can you please tell me if honey and cinnamon powder will reduce my cholesterol level without me having to make any other changes in my life, so that I can keep on eating ice cream and keep on eating butter and margarine, and avoid physical exercise, and stay out of the sunlight, and drink an unlimited supply of Pepsi, and eat at the all you can eat buffets, and so on and so forth?
That's the question that people are really asking, and if you boil it down, the question really becomes: What is the least amount that I can do and end up with a low cholesterol level?
That's really the question most people are asking -- what is the least that I can do, and still be healthy? In other words, how can I be healthy with the least investment possible? That could be an investment in time, an investment in taste, or an investment in dollars -- for example, in terms of how much nutritional supplements cost. Think about yourself -- isn't that the answer that you really want to know?
Because not everyone has three hours a day to invest in their healthy -- I invest hours a day in exercise and eating right and studying nutrition, but honestly, not everyone can do that, and I recognize that. People want to know -- what can I do that takes 10 minutes? Or, better yet, what can I do that takes 4 minutes? And if you've got something that works, what can I do that takes 1 minute? They want the 1-minute health answer to cardiovascular health, diabetes, cancer prevention, preventing Alzheimer's disease, and so on. What is the 1-minute health answer?
And if you want the 1-minute health answer, here's what you do: put a huge glass of water in one hand, and a huge glass of a blended drink in the other hand. That drink should contain soy protein, stevia, spirulina, and some kind of fruit, like a banana, so that's all blended up to make an ice-cream shake texture, but without any of the cream and without any sugar. You could also put coconut oil in that or flax oil or olive oil -- just blend it up, make sure it's delicious.
So, here's the scene: you've got a huge glass of water in one hand, and a huge glass of this spirulina protein drink in the other hand. Start your stopwatch and rush outside in the natural sunlight so that the sunlight is hitting your skin as much as possible. Take three deep breaths, chug the entire glass of spirulina and soymilk, take three more deep breaths, chug the other glass of water, take three more deep breaths, then run in place for the remainder of the minute, and when the minute is up, run back inside. That's your 1-minute health manager approach right there.
Now, is that going to help you? Will it enhance your health? Yeah, absolutely, but you sort of get what you put into it. In one minute, you're not going to get a lot of sunlight. In one minute you're not going to get a lot of exercise. You're not going to burn a lot of calories in one minute, but at least you got some water into your body, and you got some sunshine, spirulina, soy protein, healthy oils and some of the other ingredients that are going to enhance your cardiovascular health.
So, if you really want a 1-minute approach, do that, and if you do it on a daily basis, you will notice a difference in your health. It's probably the least amount of time investment you can put into health and actually see results. But if you want more results, you could expand that to -- get this -- two minutes, and if you double the investment, you will get approximately double the results. And if you're crazy enough to spend an entire hour taking care of your health, or two hours or three hours like some people do, then you're going to get much greater results, and of course there's a point of diminishing results, so two hours versus one hour doesn't necessarily mean twice the result. You're going to get a whole lot of result in one hour a day, and not quite double in two hours a day.
So, that's why most people say 45 minutes a day of exercise is really about where the middle point is. If you can walk for 45 minutes a day, that's good. You're going to be healthy, you're going to ward off cardiovascular disease, you're going to do yourself a lot of good. If, at the same time, you can avoid ingredients that promote cardiovascular disease, such as hydrogenated oils and fried foods and saturated animal fats (like you get from red meat or milk and dairy products), then you're going to do yourself that much more good.
So, I know this was a long explanation to answer this question, but let me get back to the original question. For someone who's asking, will honey and cinnamon powder help me reduce cholesterol? The answer is no. Forget about honey and cinnamon powder -- let's talk about changing your life so that cholesterol is something you don't even have to think about. And everything I've described in this answer is what you need to do to change your life so that cholesterol is no longer a problem. If you're thinking that honey and cinnamon powder is going to be a magic bullet solution, you're going down the wrong path.
Get back to the basics -- start eating the foods your body was designed to eat, get the sunshine your body was designed to receive, drink the water that nature designed you to drink, move your body, get some strength training, some flexibility training, some physical exercise. Your cholesterol will plummet down to healthy levels within a short period of time, and it will stay there for the rest of your life.
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, and he has created several downloadable courses on survival and preparedness, including his widely-downloaded course on personal safety and self-defense. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2010, Adams co-founded NaturalNews.com, a natural health video sharing site that has now grown in popularity. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also the founder and CEO of a well known email mail merge software developer whose software, 'Email Marketing Director,' currently runs the NaturalNews email subscriptions. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org
Have comments on this article? Post them here:
people have commented on this article.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Email this article to a friend
){kind=link}