Question:

I have high cholesterol and a friend suggested I try your Red Yeast Rice. Please tell me more about this.

Answer:

This is great timing as Inno-Vite has just launched the product in anticipation of changes Health Canada is set to make for a number of natural substances that were previously available in Canada by prescription only. One of those substances is lovastatin, a cholesterol-lowering drug that occurs naturally in low concentrations in some Natural Health Products.

This is the reason why such a valuable natural therapy like red yeast rice (RYR) was banned in Canada. What is RYR? In simple terms, it’s dietary staple in some Asian countries, but also a great cholesterol-lowering remedy that has long been used by practitioners of Traditional Medicine (mainly Traditional Chinese Medicine). After a highly anticipated wait, RYR is expected to be available again in Canada starting early 2012.

RYR is the natural source for a number of “statin” compounds. Many may already know that Conventional Medicine typically treats high cholesterol with these statins, which happen to be among the most-prescribed class of drugs in the world (e.g. Lipitor®, Crestor®, etc.).

What’s interesting is that RYR is just as effective as synthetic pharmaceutical statins, but at a much lower dose (theorized to be a result of the synergistic activity of numerous naturally-occurring compounds).

Statins and RYR work by inhibiting the activity of a key enzyme in the biological pathway that creates the bulk of cholesterol present in our bodies. However, this same pathway is also responsible for creating CoQ10 and vitamin D, two nutrients crucial for human health. It’s theorized that many of the side-effects that statins are responsible for is due to this “induced deficiency” of CoQ10 and vitamin D.

For this precise reason, Inno-Vite’s formulation also provides ubiquinol (the active and highly absorbable form of CoQ10) and vitamin D (as D3).

The product is simple to use as it’s just 1 vegetarian capsule taken at the start of a meal, twice daily. In my clinical practice, I would have used 4 daily (2 caps, twice daily) as I feel this would result in much better therapeutic benefits (Health Canada regulations limit the dose we can suggest on the label). Taking 4 daily is perfectly safe, especially with ubiquinol and D3 increasing the safety profile, but doing so is your own decision.

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