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Day in Health
by Lisa Collier Cool
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The safest, most effective, and cheapest treatment for high cholesterol is a vitamin that costs 7 cents per pill, according to a new report from Orthomolecular
Medicine News Service (OMNS), a nonprofit research group in Wichita, Kansas. Vitamin B3also called niacin or nicotinic acidhas been safely used for 60 years to control cholesterol, with some 42,000 scientific papers in PubMed describing its benefits and effects. Unlike statin drugs, which mainly reduce LDL cholesterol, niacin is a very safe, effective treatment for all lipid issues, improving levels of both good and bad cholesterol and triglycerides, says Bradley Bale, MD, medical director of the Heart Health Program for Grace Clinic in Lubbock, Texas. One landmark study published in Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that at therapeutic doses, niacin boosted HDL by up to 35 percent and cut triglycerides by as much as 50 percent. Most remarkably, when the researchers tracked the 8,431 participants all of whom had suffered heart attacks prior to enrolling in the studyfor 15 years, those on niacin had a 26 percent lower risk for both heart attacks and strokes, even after treatment was discontinued, compared to those taking a placebo.
Patients with complex lipid issues, such as low levels of heart-protective HDL (good) cholesterol and high triglycerides (a type of blood fat). People with inherited cholesterol disorders, such as elevated levels of lipoprotein (a), a type of cholesterol that triples heart attack risk and does not respond to statins. Taking niacin can reduce lipoprotein (a) levels by up to 40 percent, according to the European Atherosclerosis Society. Patients whose cholesterol problems arent responding to statins. Several studies show that statins plus niacin is more effective than statins alone. A Guide to Cholesterol-Free Foods