More on Boosting HDL Cholesterol, III

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Focus on Your Health:

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Thursday, 10-5-2006

More on Boosting HDL Cholesterol, III

(Our previous post has some excellent information on this. And, I didn’t post it all here.

You can see it by going to that earlier Post: Friday, 8-11-2006 Boost your HDL to protect your heart)

And, in our last two posts before today, we posted more information on boosting your HDL in response to someone who has been trying but not succeeding so far.

Here’s a bit more.

Since I’ve been very successful in keeping mine high, these other supplements I list today that I take may well be contributing to my high HDL levels.

In addition, there is significant evidence they protect my health & help prevent heart disease whether they boost HDL or not.

So, if continuing good health & protecting your heart are worthwhile to you, you might want to consider adding them yourself.

1. Vitamin C:

I take a moderately high amount of vitamin C.

Linus Pauling & Mathias Rath have made a very credible case that doing so helps to prevent heart disease.

And, it clearly has many other benefits, including protecting your body from the effects of stress & slowing your rate of aging by up to 62 percent.

I take a 500 mg time-release supplement. My daily B-complex supplement has another 500 mg. My daily multivitamin has 50 mg.

And, I get three or more servings of fruit or fruit juice each day; I’m beginning to eat at least one or two servings of vegetables each day & plan to get to 5 or more. I think this adds another 50 to 100 mg of C each day.

2. Vitamin E. It’s a bit less clear exactly how heart protective this is & exactly how.

In addition, it may be unwise to take more than 200 iu a day extra as some people do.

But Solgar makes a vitamin E supplement with 200 iu of E as natural alpha tocopherol with some of the other E complex as well, Beta, Gamma, & Delta tocopherol.

I take that one. Vitamin E is an antioxidant that works with lipids & fatty parts of your body. By helping to prevent oxidation of your LDL & probably of your HDL & blood vessel walls, this likely IS heart protective. And, it’s hard to approach this level of these nutrients by eating the foods that contain them as your sole source.

The other bit of good news is that Gamma Tocopherol helps prevent prostate, & very possibly breast & ovarian, cancer.

I also suspect that taking the several naturally occurring components of vitamin E together gives you the most health benefit.

3. Taking bilberry & ginkgo biloba supplements daily, & eating lots of blueberries each week have been shown to promote circulation, keep your mind sharp, protect your blood vessel walls & to help prevent stroke.

I take those supplements daily & eat two packages of frozen blueberries each week.

By taking both vitamin E & Ginkgo, it would be unwise for me to have surgery without discontinuing the Ginko for several days before it. And, I should never combine these with taking an anticoagulant or blood “thinning’ medication.

But doing all this clearly helps protect my heart & my health.

Could it be that these three things also get some of these health effects by boosting my HDL?

I suspect the answer is yes. But I know of no research on it.