Celt Naturals - Sterochol

Product Notes:

Sterochol's Origin Story

Atherosclerosis can progress to life-threatening levels even if you eat well and exercise regularly. Celt Naturals' co-founder Jack Davidson, who has been a marathon runner for decades, discovered this for himself five years ago, which led to his developing this product to lessen his (and potentially millions more people's) reliance on the statin drugs he ended up being prescribed with to keep his cholesterol levels under control. After recovering, he conducted extensive research on natural means of controlling cholesterol and blood pressure levels, and discovered these three promising approaches, which he was the first to combine in a single product. After conducting stability tests for two years to validate the efficacy of this synergistic combination, he applied to the Natural and Non-prescription Health Products Directorate to be allowed to market it. Health Canada soon approved and licensed it for its intended purposes, and has even explicitly approved its being used in conjunction with conventional statin medications.

Why LDL Cholesterol Levels Matter and How Statins Work

Cholesterol is a waxy or fat-like substance. As the first video explains in more detail, the human body does need it for various things (including to form part of cell membranes), so actually produces it itself in the liver, to make bile, and, after getting absorbed through the intestines, the rest gets transported via blood vessels in little bundles known as LDL (low-density lipoprotein) particles. However, if we're also consuming a lot of cholesterol in our diets and/or have other risk factors such as high blood pressure or diabetes, those LDL particles can get combined with some other factors in the blood to form pockets of plaque along the walls of the blood vessels (especially if there are a lot of triglycerides around causing inflammation in there), which not only drives the blood pressure up even further, but can also lead to blood clots leading to heart attacks or strokes if a plaque pocket bursts open.

If dietary and lifestyle changes alone do not achieve sufficient results to reduce those risks, the usual course of medical treatment is to prescribe statin drugs – typically for the rest of the person's life! – because they impede one step in the liver's own cholesterol production, and lead it to reclaim some of those LDL packets from the blood in order to continue to make enough bile. However, since statins can have a number of side effects (such as muscle pain) which leads to poor compliance and many of these side effects are dose-related, it is quite sensible to seek alternate means to reduce relying upon them exclusively.

How Sterochol Can Influence Blood Pressure and Cholesterol Levels

To lessen the amount of statins needed (possibly altogether, if begun early enough), Sterochol's three clusters of ingredients help lower LDL levels and plaque formation via several different routes. Let's address them in alphabetical order.

Although known primarily as a stress reducer (and also increasingly as a testosterone booster), Ashwagandha has also been shown to have several cardiovascular benefits. It can:
* lower blood pressure (the #1 risk factor for strokes);
* stabilize triglyceride levels in the bloodstream (thereby reducing inflammation there: one of the main factors that causes plaque formation; it also reduces inflammation in other ways);
* inhibit lipid peroxidation (the oxidative degradation of lipids (fats): another factor in plaque formation); and even
* reduce the main culprit, LDL cholesterol, while supporting HDL levels (the High Density "good" cholesterol which helps remove the other kinds from the arteries, to send back to the liver).

Plant sterols, aka phytosterols, are plants' counterparts to the cholesterol found in animals. Because they have a similar chemical 'shape,' they compete for which ones get taken up by the sites in the gastrointestinal tract which collect cholesterol to form those LDL packets that are to be sent to the bloodstream for the rest of the body. That ends up 'crowding out' some of the animal fats that will then just be eliminated rather than absorbed, and when our bodies discover that the phytosterols that were absorbed can't really be used to make LDL packets, they end up being eliminated, too.

Finally, Sterochol also provides three specific probiotic strains within the same broader family. This particular combination has been extensively studied for over a decade, and is now being sold as a stand-alone product for the same LDL-lowering purpose in another commercially available product called AB-LIFE® by AB-Biotics (a Spanish division of Japan's KANEKA Corporation). Several clinical studies have been conducted, finding it can lower LDL levels by nearly 18%, and benefits cardiovascular health in several ways, by: 
* preventing dietary cholesterol from being absorbed in the intestine by, in essence, dissolving the bile salts before they have the chance to break them down;
* leading the liver to reclaim more LDL from the bloodstream to replace those bile salts (which would have been recycled if they hadn't been dissolved);
* reducing how susceptible the LDL is to getting oxidized (a risk factor for plaque formation) while also increasing the 'good' HDL type's antioxidant capacity;
* producing Short Chain Fatty Acids (SCFAs) as by-products, which not only reduce inflammation in the gut, but also lower the rate of cholesterol production.