The following text would be an appropriate epitaph for the almost 15-year-old overstrung and horribly mistaken cholesterol hullabaloo which has kept both a large part of the medically orthodox doctors as well as the alternative therapists permanently flustered.
Ayurveda - the thousand-year-old art of healing of the Hindu - speaks of a suffering called medoroga - "fat-disease". In modern diagnostic usage it would be juxtaposed with arteriosclerosis - also known as hardening of the arteries - which is the most important reason for cardiovascular disease, one of the main killer diseases of the so-called civilized world in this century.
The problem is not really the cholesterol which is a fairly normal and absolutely necessary substance in the human biochemistry. Cholesterol is e.g. a prerequisite for the production of certain hormones in the body as well as vitamin D, and functionally it takes part in the structure of the cell membranes.
The problem with cholesterol is that the modern human being does not have the ability to catabolize and utilize it. To "avoid" cholesterol is therefore not a very smart procedure, and to reduce it at all costs and by all means can be downright dangerous. The only right thing to do is to give the body a chance to catabolize and utilize the cholesterol correctly. And this is where ancient Asian wisdom comes to our rescue.
Already in the 1960s in India, an intense activity in health circles was aiming towards giving the ancient Indian drug guggul its legitimate place in the modern global pharmacopoeia.
It was unbelievable to the vaidyas of the time - the erudite ones in the Ayervedic art of medicine - that we, in the West, with our disastrous development of medaroga, did not use guggul which was a natural substance that had been tested for centuries. Embarrassed, we had to explain that we simply didn't. Cultural and scientific "racial discrimination" was probably the only "reasonable" answer to the question.
However, 25 years later, some of us have begun, little by little, to profit from this amazing medicine. The resurrection of ancient Indian medicines on a global level started in the middle of the 1960s, when G. V. Satyavat, an Indian scientist, among others began to close-read the Sushruta Samhita, an ancient Indian writing on the art of medicine, and inspired by this, he continued his research untill his thesis on the subject was accepted in 1966. His thesis indicated that the guggul of ancient times was the answer to the civilization-related disease in excelsis, in the 20th century.
Since the thesis and the pioneer work, another 20 scientific publications have confirmed and consolidated the original realization which was that guggul lowers the accumulation of fat in the blood since it reduces the harmful VLDL - and LDL - cholesterol and the triglycerides, and also increases the level of the beneficial HDL-cholesterol.
Guggul is in fact - like Boswellin- a resin from the little desert tree, Commiphora mukul, widespread in the western part of India. The natural guggul contains a large amount of terpenes, esters and the so-called superior alcohols, but the particular group responsible for normalizing the cholesterol is the guggulsterones.
By means of phytological methods, tablets have been made with a content of guggul sterones which is not below 25 mg. This concentration is the biologically most active and has been tested as the most effective one.
With the right concentration of guggul, a cholesterol reducing effect has been recorded. This effect by far exceeds the effect of any other natural substance and it has no relation to age, gender, or body weight.
Moreover, these results have been obtained without any simultaneous dietary regulations and diets, and without any of the numerous serious side effects that accompany the medically orthodox medicines such as the very commonly used Clofibrate.
The latest reports on certain standard drugs which are usually used for high blood cholesterol, seem to support the notion that these drugs can induce cancer. This risk should prompt a renewed turn to the treasure of the East with its experiences which have been able to stand the test not only through some weeks and months in the laboratories of today, but through the daily use for thousands of years by millions of people.
Dosage
250 - 500 mg. 2 - 3 times a day in connection with meals.
Side effects
Guggul can cause nausea and flatus.
