With the Food and Drug Administrations requirements that all possible side effects be advertised it is now impossible to not understand the potential for problems to arise that have nothing to do with the condition you are being medicated for. With the possibility of permanent liver damage from the use of statins to manage cholesterol levels who would not want to explore the effectiveness of natural statins.

The entire alternative and holistic medicine communities have built their businesses and practices around the use of natural products to replace the use of chemically produced drugs that many times do more harm than good in our systems. Almost every cholesterol reducing drug on the market has liver damage as one of the potential side effects. Also, statins do not effectively treat the problem so that eventually you can stop taking the drug. Once prescribed, it is almost always necessary to stay on some sort of cholesterol reducing drug for the rest of your life.

Because liver damage does not readily show itself in easily seen ways, you will need to undergo liver testing every six weeks to make sure your liver is not building up toxic levels of chemicals. Finding a natural alternative that will prevent toxicity in your liver would be the thing to do. There are actually several natural alternatives to chemically produced statins that have shown great promise with their cholesterol reducing abilities.

A very common plant, cultivated for profit in many parts of the world, has been shown in clinical trials to provide even better results at lowering overall cholesterol levels. It also raises the good cholesterol (HDL) while reducing triglycerides. This plant is cane sugar, and the active chemical found naturally in the sugar cane is called policosanol. Another welcome affect of policosanol is its ability to prevent blood clotting. One of the biggest issues in older people with high cholesterol is an increased risk of blood clotting (#1 cause of strokes).

While everyone understands that refined sugar is to be avoided in your diet, many natural sugars are suggested as alternatives and are digested more thoroughly. Policosanol has been shown in human clinical trials to outperform mainstream patent statin drugs and is a viable natural statin alternative without the dreaded side effects that prescription stains inevitably cause. There are many research studies you can read about the great results that policosanol has shown in reducing cholesterol levels without the appearance of debilitating side effects.