The right medication for high cholesterol
When your high cholesterol doesn't respond to diet and exercise, you may need to take medication for high cholesterol. There are several very good high cholesterol drugs available today, and there are also a couple of natural cholesterol medications available over the counter that you can take as supplements while you're working on getting your cholesterol down with diet and exercise, as well as later if you're taking medications to control your LDL level.
The first medication for high cholesterol your doctor will look at is a statin. These chemicals act on your liver, preventing a specific enzyme from being synthesized by the body. This enzyme helps the body digest LDL cholesterol, or "bad" cholesterol. The liver responds by processing LDL cholesterol out of the body, helping you get rid of it reasonably quickly. This drug does not affect your HDL, or "good" cholesterol, levels.
The other major medication for high cholesterol your doctor may consider is Zetia. This is a very new drug, but has been shown to be an excellent cholesterol lowering medication, decreasing blood levels of LDL in some people by about 20%. In cases where neither drug for high cholesterol seems to be doing a great job of controlling your LDL levels, your doctor is likely to put you on a prescription that combines both drugs into one.
There are several other medications for high cholesterol, each of which acts in a different way on your body. Niacin (a form of vitamin B) and fibric acid drugs are often used in combination with statins to lower triglycerides as well as LDL. Fish oil supplements are sometimes used as a high cholesterol treatment. If your HDL is low, these alternate drugs are often used to raise it.
Side effects to prescription drugs for high cholesterol can be quite serious. Because they act on your liver, your liver may be permanently damaged by changes in enzyme levels. Your doctor will require you to have periodic liver tests to guard against this problem. Statins can also cause muscle pain, which is a symptom of cells breaking down. This is normally harmless if annoying, but in some cases a substance can be released that will cause severe kidney damage. For this reason, any muscle pain while taking a statin should be reported to your doctor.
When you start taking prescription drugs to treat high cholesterol, you should view it as a lifetime commitment. This is why you need to use every possible dietary and exercise intervention first before taking cholesterol drugs. Medication for high cholesterol should always be viewed as a last resort, used only if all else fails.
It is a very bad idea to take medication for high cholesterol if you don't have a cholesterol problem. They are not preventives, but treatments. While high cholesterol can make you sick, your body depends on having a certain minimal level of cholesterol as well, and taking unnecessary high cholesterol medicine can drop your LDL and HDL below the safe level.