Safe and Cheap Cholesterol Treatment

Hate the statin drugs you need for high cholesterol and the side effects it causes? Well, the solution has actually been around for the past 60 years and its extremely cheap, safe and most effective. Ready for the answer? A vitamin that costs about 7 cents per pill, vitamin B3 (also known as niacin or nicotinic acid). Vitamin B3 has been safely used for over 60 years to control cholesterol, having 42,000 scientific papers in PubMed describing its benefits and effects.

Statin drugs mainly reduce LD cholesterol, while niacin is an extremely safe, effective treatment for all lipid issues, improving both good and bad levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. A study published in Journal of the American College of Cardiology showed that therapeutic doses of niacin boosted HDL by up to 35% and cut triglycerides by as much as 50%. When researchers tracked the 8,431 participants, all of which suffered from heart attacks prior to enrolling in the study, those on niacin had a 26% lower risk for both heart attacks and strokes even after treatment was discontinued compared to those taking a placebo.

Niacin, or Vitamin B3, is extremely effective, but very often overlooked. The cause of overlooking such an effective drug is nothing other than the money cholesterol-controlling drugs bring in for the trillion dollar-per-year pharmaceutical industry. Although this drug is proven to be so effective, it does have an annoying side effect that gives it a bad rap. This side effect is called “the niacin flush”, a temporary and sometimes itchy/tingling redness of the skin that usually lasts anywhere from 30-60 minutes at a time. Doctors are aware that their patients will call complaining of this side effect often, but it can be avoided by starting with a lower dose of niacin that gradually increases. Also, patients who find they suffer from this irritating side effect typically find that the problem disappears or becomes significantly less over time.

If you are a victim of high cholesterol that requires a statin drug you know that there are a large range of side effects that cause most patients to not want to take them. Ask your doctor about switching to niacin to save yourself money and to suffer from less side effects while correcting the problem!