When might a statin be advisable?

Contrary to conventional advice, very few people actually need a statin drug. Familial hypercholesterolemia is a genetic defect that can result in cholesterol levels above 330, and these people may indeed benefit from a statin drug.

"Yes, I do think that controlling the total cholesterol would be a benefit for those people," Dr. Rowen says. "They're few and far between, but they exist. But I would go with red yeast rice first, before I would [prescribe a] statin... because it has naturally-occurring Lovastatin in it – Mevacor. I would rather use that because it's a whole food. There are pretty good studies out there showing that whole red yeast rice not only helps protect you from that [high cholesterol], but animals also live longer when they're on it. Being a whole food, there may be a big advantage to it.

Always – whether you're using red yeast rice or a statin drug – be sure to take Coenzyme Q10 or ubiquinol, because the same enzyme that makes the cholesterol also participates with CoQ10 production.

... If their total cholesterol is over 300 or 330, I would consider the use of red yeast rice or a statin. That's the only time I would consider it. Other than that, I would look for ways to reduce the potential impact of toxic cholesterol metabolism... What I try to do first with my patients is to get them to clean up their lifestyle, so that what they're doing in their life will not have toxic effects on their apparently elevated cholesterol. I'm saying "apparently elevated" because I don't believe that God makes mistakes.

If you walk into me with a cholesterol of 240, I think that your body has that level for a reason. Maybe, just maybe, your body is crying for more vitamin D. It's asking your liver to make more cholesterol so that it can convert [vitamin D], or maybe your body wants more testosterone or another steroid hormone, so it's calling for more raw material.

I don't know how much I want to interrupt those processes with sledgehammers like statins. I would prefer to get your body not to oxidize the cholesterol by eliminating processed, refined foods. My mantra is "No fast, fried, refined, or processed foods." That's first on the list. Keep your diet 70 to 80 percent raw living food, and what you do with the rest – I don't care if you want to eat meat, chicken, fish, and eggs... just don't fry it. Eat all the meat you want within that 30 percent. The rest of it, try to keep it organic, not genetically engineered, unprocessed, and raw, so you're not destroying the fatty acids.

I personally believe that I have found the underlying cause of heart disease or the principal cause of heart disease in this country. That's the fact that we are heating these essential fatty acids, these unsaturated fatty acids. We're oxidizing them, and we're taking them right into our body already rancid. I think that is one of the primary causes."

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