PreDisease.com Blog

There is no doubt natural supplements, vitamins and herbs are less expensive than prescription medications, but even these more natural alternatives can quickly become expensive when you start taking more than one at one time.

One of the reasons people turn to natural medicine is because of its holistic approach to health and wellness. Natural medicine looks to treat the whole body and not simply the symptoms of a specific disease. Proponents of natural health believe the body will naturally seek to restore internal balance, healing itself when faced with illness or disease, a state known as homeostasis. Natural remedies are therefore used more as a means to support this process than an actual cure for symptoms that result from a diseased state. Each remedy serves a specific purpose whether it be to boost immunity or to support the organs for example, so it is common when someone is facing an illness that they are prescribed more than one remedy. The problem however, is that while each of these remedies may in fact be useful and even highly effective, when you must take them each 2-3 times a day, it can become not only overwhelming, but also expensive. It is at this point, that many people simply opt to go back to a medication that is geared to relieving symptoms. Despite the risk and the inevitable side effects most medications come with, they are usually easier to deal with than having to remember to take numerous supplements several times a day.

For those who don’t give up and continue to look to the natural approach, some will opt for combination supplements. These products offer remedies that contain numerous ingredients geared to treating a much broader range of issues. While in theory, these supplements may be easier to take simply because you no longer need to take an array of different pills to achieve the same result, the problem then becomes the efficacy of the product itself.

Clinical studies are typically done to determine not only the actual effectiveness of an herb for example, but also the most effective dosage. The therapeutic properties of each herb will be examined, and the specific medicinal chemicals analyzed to determine the safest manner in which to take (or not take as the case may be) the remedy. So, when you buy a product, hopefully it contains the exact ratio of therapeutic ingredients so the remedy works as it should. While you would think this would be the case of all natural supplements, the truth is, it is still a very unregulated industry so in many cases, there are no real laws that state a product must contain the ideal ratio of medicinal ingredients. This is especially true in the case of “all in one” remedies.

When herbs are combined, they can either help or hinder each other. While each herb may have specific therapeutic properties, when they are combined with other herbs, these same chemical properties can be enhanced or in some cases, cause adverse reactions. It becomes even more important therefore in cases of combined remedies, that the herbs used have not only been tested individually, but that they have also been tested together. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, which is why you will often hear about products that have been suddenly pulled from the shelves because people have had severe reactions.

There is no question the most cost effective way to take natural supplements is in these combined formulas. Taking this type of remedy can significantly reduce the overall cost of treatment. The trick however, is to find a product that has also been clinically tested to work synergistically within the body. Each herb and or nutrient must be tested to determine its effectiveness and safety when used in that specific formula. So, before you purchase a combination product, do a little research yourself to see if the company has also done their research. In the end, it can save you money and ultimately make the difference in whether or not the product will be effective.

For more information about clinically tested and proven all natural supplements, visit: http://www.predisease.com

Do you know your numbers?

The first step in getting your cholesterol under control is to know what the normal ranges are. That way you can know when you are in or out of the danger zone. Total cholesterol levels should be less than 200. HDL cholesterol should be greater than 50. LDL cholesterol should be less than 70. Those are the optimal numbers. And while it’s important to lower your bad cholesterol, doctors are now telling us we need to really concentrate on raising good cholesterol or HDL, too.

Here are five tips for boosting your good cholesterol level.

1. If you smoke, quit. Everyone knows smoking is bad for you in so many ways. But what you may not know is that smoking also decreases your HDL cholesterol. Not only that, it actually changes the chemical composition of HDL which entirely wipes out the beneficial effects of it anyway. It’s been shown that quitting smoking can raise your good cholesterol by 10%.

2. Shed the pounds. Extra weight is detrimental to good cholesterol. Just losing a few pounds can turn this around. There are so many reasons to take off excess weight — knowing you can increase your HDL and take better care of your heart should be even more motivation.

3. Get moving. If you are a couch potato here’s a good reason to get up and start moving. Within just a couple months consistent aerobic exercise can raise your HDL cholesterol as much as 5%. The best way to do that is to engage in some kind of brisk exercise five days a week in 30-minute sessions. Try walking, swimming, playing basketball, dancing, running  — whatever will get your heart pumping.

4. Pay attention to the fats you eat. Fat is essential for a healthy but body but that doesn’t mean you can go overboard. You should concentrate on monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Where can you find those? Olive oil, canola oils, and peanut oil all contain monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats. These fats are important because they actually increase HDL’s ability to reduce inflammation. Also, make sure you include foods high in Omega-3 fatty acids.

5. If you drink, use moderation. Even though research shows that occasional use of alcohol may actually raise HDL cholesterol levels, the benefits aren’t substantial enough to suggest you start drinking if you don’t already. The ruler of thumb is to drink only in moderation. Moderation means no more than two drinks a day for men and no more than one a day for women.

Natural supplements to lower your total cholesterol

There are many prescription drugs on the market today that help lower cholesterol levels. However, they been proven to sometimes have negative side effects and in some cases can even be dangerous to your health. That’s why the best defense against high total cholesterol is a natural supplement.

In the best-case scenario, a natural supplement is designed to treat cholesterol before it has a chance to reach the higher levels. In other words, the supplement treats the pre-disease state. Pre-lipid™ and Pre-lipid+™ do exactly that.

The pre-disease level for cholesterol is 200- 239. The pre-disease number for HDL cholesterol is less than 50. Prelipid™ effectively lowers your total cholesterol so that all cholesterol components fall within a healthy range.

PreEmptive Meds

Intervention within the pre-disease state is the pillar of the PreEmptive Med philosophy.  As a matter of fact, it’s the only pre-disease therapeutics company that focuses on the pre-disease condition.  And with America’s health care crisis, taking care of problems before they reach full-blown disease is a timely issue indeed.

The cost of Prelipid™ is only $9 per week.  You’ll save approximately 70% the cost of prescription meds.  It’s 100% safe, 100% natural and hundreds of doctors across America and Canada have successfully treated thousands of patients with it.

If you’re concerned about your cholesterol level but aren’t willing to risk your health on dangerous prescription drugs, you really need to check out this powerful cholesterol supplement.  You can find out more information at website.  Go ahead and check it out here - it could actually help prolong your life.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), chronic disease now accounts for 70 percent of all deaths in the United States. In fact, statistics show as many as 133 million, or an astounding 45 percent of all Americans, currently suffer from at least one chronic disease such as heart disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer or diabetes, with 53 percent of those suffering from two or more these illnesses. While these statistics are staggering, what is even more alarming is that we now know up to 90 percent of these illnesses are actually preventable.

The question then is why, if the majority of these diseases are indeed preventable, are so many people still developing chronic illnesses? The answer is simply that traditional medicine alone has no way of treating something that has not yet happened. Traditional or conventional medicine as it is often termed is based on removing and treating symptoms. If there are no real and treatable symptoms, modern medicine is at a loss. There are no drugs or surgical remedies for something like pre-diabetes for example. When a patient comes to their doctor with a general complaint of “just not feeling well”, without a specific diagnosis, in all likelihood and based on their training, the doctor will either order a whole battery of often unnecessary and costly tests in order to identify a disease that can then be treated, or simply tell the patient to go home and come back in a few weeks if things don’t improve. The bottom line is that modern medicine is not equipped to deal with a patient who is in a “pre-disease” state (somewhere between optimal health and diseased) and it isn’t until they have actually reached a diseased state, when they are beyond the prevention stage, that they are finally treated.

For this and many other reasons, people are now turning to alternative or complimentary medicine. Practitioners such as naturopaths, chiropractors and herbalists for example can suggest a variety of holistic and less invasive approaches to treat illness. And while many people will find improved health with these natural approaches, there are still those who aren’t 100 percent comfortable with the lack of clinical evidence many of these approaches provide. Fortunately, a third option now exists.

Integrative medicine, an incorporation of both traditional and alternative medicines, offers all the benefits of a more natural approach that so many Americans are now turning to, backed up by substantiated evidence based on clinical trials and ongoing research. In essence, it provides people with the best of both worlds.

Like alternative approaches to healthcare, integrative medicine promotes prevention and healing of the whole individual. Conventional medicine on the other hand, typically seeks to treat specific symptoms. As well, integrative medicine looks more to the body itself as a mechanism for healing whereas conventional medicine tends to look outside the body at such things as medications and surgery as a way to heal the individual. Interestingly, the key tenet of integrative medicine stems from the beliefs of such ancient healers as Hippocrates, known today as the Father of Medicine. As a medical visionary, Hippocrates and other physicians of his time, taught that given the proper tools (things like optimal nutrition and exercise), the human body has the innate ability to heal and balance itself. Integrative medicine promotes this natural equilibrium known as homoeostasis and strives to support the body in the best way possible so it can use its own resources to induce healing.

One of the key resources in integrative medicine is the use of standardized nutritional supplements. While the body is indeed designed to heal itself, when it is in a weakened and unbalanced state, natural plant-based formulations are often the best way to enhance the body’s ability to restore balance. These formulations are also effective when used in concert with prescription medications in cases of progressive disease. Integrative medicine further promotes supplementation as a preventative. Simply living in today’s fast-paced world with its various stresses, pollutants and toxins can eventually drain the body’s immune system. Scientific evidence has shown various plants contain healing compounds that help reduce such things as inflammation and oxidative damage, both of which lead to many chronic illnesses. And while they are also shown in many cases to significantly bolster the immune system, many people make the mistake of waiting until they feel fatigued or sick before they turn to supplements. The truth is, by the time your body shows symptoms of illness, it is already overwhelmed.  If you continue to ignore these often minor warning signs, as most of us do, they eventually result in chronic disease.

The best way to assure your health in the future is to become proactive now. This often entails making lifestyle changes and includes such things as drinking plenty of water, getting regular exercise and sleep, eating properly and when necessary, taking clinically based and standardized nutritional formulations before symptoms become critical.

By all estimations, we are quickly reaching epidemic levels when it comes to high cholesterol levels in North America. Statistics tell us close to 50 percent of the population has a total blood cholesterol level over 200 mg/dL with 17 percent of adults over 20 having levels reaching over 240 mg/dl, a number that puts them at serious risk for heart disease and stroke.

In a healthy person, about 80 percent of your total cholesterol is naturally produced by your liver. The remaining 20 percent comes from dietary sources. Although a certain amount of cholesterol is necessary to help your body produce specific hormones, repair cells, metabolize vitamin D and create bile acids required for healthy digestion, when your cholesterol levels get too high, this fatty substance begins to accumulate in your arteries where it eventually restricts blood flow, causing heart attack and/or stroke (atherosclerosis).

While we are consistently told high cholesterol (hypercholesterolemia) is bad, the truth is most of us don’t understand the role this fatty like substance plays and the true impact it has on our health. There are essentially two types of cholesterol. Bad cholesterol, also called low density lipoprotein (LDL) is the cholesterol that circulates throughout your bloodstream accumulating in your arteries as plaque. Good cholesterol, or high density lipoprotein (HDL), attaches to these LDL molecules, returning them back to the liver where they can then be broken down and metabolized. The problem today, a result in part caused by the typical Western diet of high trans fat foods, is that most people have more LDL cholesterol than can be naturally eliminated by the liver so it begins to build up within the blood vessels and arteries. This slow narrowing and constricting of these vital passageways quickly becomes a ticking time bomb and because there are no outward warning signs for hypercholesterolemia, until it may be too late of course, the only way to know if you are at risk is to get a simple blood test.

Ideally, you want to lower your LDL cholesterol while you increase your HDL cholesterol. Research tells us our total cholesterol level should be less than 200 mg/dl. Unfortunately, most people today fall somewhere between 200-239 mg/dl (which puts them in the borderline high or “pre-disease” range) and 240 mg/dl or higher, which means they are already at serious risk for heart disease and/or stroke.

In these cases, drug therapy is commonly prescribed to lower cholesterol. In 2001 alone, patients filled over 57-million prescriptions for Lipitor. According to Consumers Reports Best Buy Drugs, as of 2006, this popular statin drug is now among eight prescription medications that make up the over 13-million prescriptions Americans fill every month in an effort to reduce their soaring cholesterol levels. In fact, the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) recently reported the use of statin drugs increased 156 percent between 2000 and 2005. Drug manufacturers make over $20 billion a year on statin drugs, many of which are marked up over 4000 percent. And yet, despite all their claims that statin drugs lower cholesterol, thereby reducing the risk of heart disease, it is still the leading cause of death in North America. How can this be?

The answer is simple. Statin drugs are risky. While they may in fact lower cholesterol levels, they also increase the risk of liver disease, peripheral neuropathy (nerve problems), muscle deterioration and kidney failure, cancer, and ironically, heart failure. In many cases taking statin drugs may be necessary in order to quickly reduce dangerously high cholesterol levels. But they are never without risk. In fact, researchers are only beginning to understand the side effects of statins.

The good news is there are several natural ways to lower your cholesterol. Ideally, you actually want to increase your HDL cholesterol while lowering your LDL level. For men, a perfect cholesterol balance is an HDL level of 40 mg/dL or above and an LDL level below 100 mg/dl. Women should shoot for an HDL level of 50 mg/dl or higher and again, a LDL level below 100 mg/dl. Essentially, studies show the higher your HDL level, the lower your risk for heart disease.

People who have a statin intolerance or simply want to lower their cholesterol without harmful medications, often ask how can I lower my LDL cholesterol naturally? Apart from lifestyle and dietary changes, there are supplements and vitamins that can help lower bad cholesterol safely, without the often devastating side effects of stain drugs. Plant sterols also known as phytosterols, are especially effective for hypercholesterolemia. In fact, more than 50 years of research and studies show plant sterols can lower total and LDL cholesterol levels by as much as 15 percent, especially when used in combination with dietary changes. This is significant when you consider researchers estimate a 10 percent decrease in LDL cholesterol can lower the risk of heart disease by 20 percent over a lifetime. The problem with the majority of commercial phytosterol supplements however, is they are completely insoluble in water, which means they cannot be effectively absorbed by the body. It is imperative therefore, you purchase only products that use microencapsulation, a unique delivery system that allows the phytosterols to be dispersed and absorbed.
Many plants, herbs and vitamins are also clinically proven to lower cholesterol and reduce arterial inflammation, both of which reduce the risk of heart disease. For instance, studies show common plants such as coriander , fenugreek and garlic are very effective remedies when it comes to lowering cholesterol naturally. As well, less common plants like guggulu (a small thorny plant used in Ayruvedic medicine for centuries), terminalia arjuna (a South Asian ornamental tree), and a plant known as spreading hog weed each have significant healing properties useful in lowering LDL cholesterol and preventing heart disease. When used together and in the right proportions, they can be an effective alternative to Lipitor and other statin drugs.

The bottom line is you need to have your cholesterol level checked now. Treating high cholesterol early can help you avoid the need for costly drug therapy, which comes with many dangerous side effects. There are ways to lower your cholesterol naturally but you need to be proactive. Speak to your doctor and ask about clinically proven, all natural supplements designed to lower cholesterol safely.

These days people are paying close attention to their cholesterol number. And with good reason. Heart disease is the nation’s number one cause of death. As a matter of fact, approximately 1 million people will die from heart attacks or related heart disease each year. And often people are totally unaware that they are at risk.

When Angela Griffin received the lab results for her cholesterol level, she wasn’t expecting bad news. She watched her weight and followed what she assumed to be a reasonably healthy diet. So, when she heard her doctor say that her cholesterol was above normal range, she was shocked. With a level of 226 mg/dl, her cholesterol was higher than it should be – the desired number is below 200mg/dl.

Angela’s doctor told her she had two options – she could take a popular statin drug to bring down her cholesterol level or she could lower her cholesterol naturally. Because she had heard of the possible painful side effects and dangers of statin drugs, she chose the natural route.

What exactly is cholesterol anyway?

Cholesterol is a type of fat produced by the liver. It’s also found in many of the foods we eat. This fat is essential for certain hormone production, building healthy cells, and aids in digestion of fat. Your body is extremely efficient in producing cholesterol, so you don’t have to worry too much about getting enough from the food you eat.

As a matter of fact, you should be more concerned that you’re getting too much. Too much LDL cholesterol, the “bad” cholesterol, can cause serious damage because it’s a major player in the buildup of dangerous plague that can clog your arteries.

How to lower cholesterol naturally

When you consider the alarming fact that 90% of people who have heart attacks have cholesterol levels between 200–250, the decision to take steps to lower any level within that range is certainly a smart one. However, since prescription drugs designed to control cholesterol are potentially dangerous, it’s far better to attack the problem with lifestyle changes and with a natural supplement.

Changing your lifestyle

The most obvious step to take is to monitor your diet. A diet high in soluble fiber works wonders for soaking up cholesterol before your body has a chance to absorb it. Some antioxidants help prevent plague buildup, so you want to make sure your diet includes plenty of these disease-fighting substances.

Also, you’ll want to incorporate “power” foods into your diet such as oatmeal, garlic, beans, apples, flaxseeds, and almonds.

You’ve undoubtedly aware that proper exercise is crucial to good health. Even 30 minutes of exercise a day can do wonders for your cholesterol. Bike riding or brisk walking increases arterial blood flow with diminishes the chance of plague buildup and inflammation.

Natural supplements

Because popular prescription meds are not a viable alternative for many people, for many doctors and patients natural supplements are becoming more and more the treatment of choice. But not all supplements are the same.

The best supplements are 100% natural, safe, and are based on proprietary physical combinations which get to the root cause of the problem.

Preemptive Medicine

Cholesterol supplements offered by Preemptive Meds are exactly like that. Prelipid™, their cholesterol supplement, is based on eight botanical formulas that reduce cholesterol and inflammation in the arteries.

As a matter of fact, hundreds of doctors in the US have successfully treated tens of thousands of patients – for over two years – with remarkable results. Prelipid™ cholesterol supplement has been proven to lower cholesterol levels 30 to 40 points on average.

Treating the Predisease State

The cornerstone of Preemptive Med’s philosophy is based on prevention. If intervention occurs in the predisease state, then the onset of frank disease can be prevented or significantly delayed. The doctors and professionals at Preemptive Meds believe this philosophy, aggressively treating the predisease state, is the answer to America’s healthcare crisis.

Remember Angela Griffin’s cholesterol level of 226? That number actually falls within the predisease range. By lowering her cholesterol now before it gets in the dangerously high levels, she can possibly avoid the tragic consequences of high cholesterol.

The good news is that now Prelipid™ is directly available to the public. The cost is totally affordable and actually saves up to 70% of the cost of prescription drugs. For about $9 a week, you can have the peace of mind that comes with knowing you’re doing your best to treat your cholesterol the natural way.

You can find out more about Preemptive Meds and Prelipid™ here.