Is cholesterol ratio important or not? For the average lay person, it is easy to get confused on what all the cholesterol numbers really mean. And what if my numbers are too high? The real question we should be asking though is this – how can I improve my cholesterol numbers in a natural way without having to get started on those statin drugs that can have truly debilitating muscle pain and cognitive side effects? Let’s explore what the cholesterol numbers mean and then on to lowering cholesterol naturally.

Cholesterol Ratio – Is Yours Cause for Concern?

The ratio your doctor will most frequently discuss is the ratio of Total Cholesterol divided by your HDL cholesterol. For example, if your Total Cholesterol is 200 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) and your HDL cholesterol is 50 mg/dL, your Chol/HDLC ratio is 4-to-1 or 4.0. Most conventional doctors use that ratio only as a measure of risk and will tell you the LDL number and Total Cholesterol number individually are the most important. The primary reason for this assessment is that the main treatment protocol for many doctors is to prescribe a statin drug which primarily targets LDL cholesterol. So they look at the Total Cholesterol number and the LDL number and quickly prescribe a statin if either is out of line. Shown in the following chart are the optimal cholesterol numbers to shoot for. 

But integrative physicians (who use both conventional and natural healing modalities) generally take a vastly different approach to the cholesterol ratio issue and to the needed treatment protocol. They will tell you that the cholesterol numbers involving Total Cholesterol are almost useless as an indicator of cardiovascular disease. In fact, the truth is that half of all people who die from heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels. Most all integrative physicians will tell you that the cholesterol-heart disease connection just isn’t as strong as it’s made out to be by mainstream medicine and the pharmaceutical industry.

Why You Can’t Just Ignore High Cholesterol Numbers

You might come to the conclusion that if cholesterol is not the villain in heart disease like it’s made out to be, then you can just ignore your cholesterol numbers – whatever they are! Well not quite so fast. Elevated cholesterol numbers or an out-of-balance cholesterol ratio serves as the warning light on the dashboard. They may not necessarily be predictive of heart disease, but they indicate your liver is producing higher levels than normal of cholesterol to meet some unmet health need in your body. So what is going on? Often it means there is excess inflammation somewhere that the body is trying to deal with by producing more cholesterol. So what do you do?

1. What you don’t do is start taking that statin drug and think all is well. This only treats the symptoms and brings a host of new side effect problems with it.
2. What you do do is to begin three or four key natural healing actions which will enable your body to heal itself and get those cholesterol numbers back in line on its own. Sure, you can have your doctor run some advanced cholesterol measuring labs that will measure the subtypes of cholesterol which truly are predictive of heart disease (Vertical Auto Profile (VAP) test or the Lipoprotein Particle Profile (LPP) test.) But why go to that trouble and expense when most everyone who follows these natural healing steps will see their cholesterol numbers become normalized within 6 weeks to 3 months. If yours are not after that period, then you can ask the doctor to run those special tests to see if the subtypes of cholesterol that are truly dangerous are the kind you have or not. But you likely won’t ever have to run those extra labs; when you go about lowering cholesterol naturally, you are providing healing at the root cause of your high cholesterol and thus helping to restore health – not just fix the symptoms. So how do you know what to do, what strategies to follow.

Top Three Action Steps for Lowering Cholesterol Naturally

Part 2 of this blog spells out three specific strategies for lowering cholesterol naturally. These are the ones you want to start with. They alone will many times get your cholesterol numbers back in order.