Red Yeast Rice, Statin Drugs And CoQ10

If you have very high cholesterol and are therefore considered a health risk for strokes and heart attacks, you are probably on cholesterol lowering drugs. Statins are one of the cholesterol lowering drugs that are often given.

Red Yeast Rice is a somewhat natural alternative to statin drugs. One of the problems with Red Yeast Rice is that it does the same things as statin drugs and has some of the same side effects. I had been taking Red Yeast Rice for some time and posted about it on this blog, before I found out about the association between both statin drugs and Red Yeast Rice and a very high incidence of ALS (Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis), or Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Given a choice, I have a preference for a nice fast heart attack over creeping paralysis, thank you. 

I'd just as soon not have either if given that option, so I have been doing more research, of course. That brought up information regarding a food supplement that lowers the risks associated with both statin drugs and Red Yeast Rice. 

That food supplement is called CoQ10. This food supplement can be found in many health food stores and online as well. It is advised that one not wing it on use of CoQ10, but consult on the use of it with one's physician.

Some sources that I found suggested that in order to be therapeutic, the doses of CoQ10 need to be massive doses. If you are going to mess around with massive doses, I strongly advise you to consult with your doctor.

You may know from reading my blog posts that I have a decided preference for getting my medicine naturally from my diet as much as possible. Naturally, that meant that I also researched foods that contain a lot of CoQ10. Fatty types of fish and organ meats have the most. 

Since I am veggie, I also looked up vegetarian foods that are higher in CoQ10. Soy oil is one of the ones that came up high. Since soy is one of the major GMO culprits, I am not entirely happy with that. 

Raw foods do the best in providing your body with vegetarian types of CoQ10. Reading about some of the raw foods that are high in CoQ10, made me wonder whether my body is starting to become somewhat educated with its cravings. I have been wanting to eat peanut butter and sesame seeds a lot lately. Those happen to be two of the better plant sources of CoQ10. 

Raw peanuts are much better sources of CoQ10 than peanut butter. This is because any heat processing of the foods containing CoQ10 remove much of the value of the CoQ10. I have already been eating unusually large amounts of raw sesame seeds.

I have not found any studies on this or even posts, but I intend to try sprouting raw peanuts and sesame seeds and eating the sprouts raw. Many, if not all sprouts contain several times the nutrient value of the plant itself. 

I am not going to suggest anyone try this great leap into the unknown, with the use of raw sprouts as sources of CoQ10. I did feel that I want to get the idea out there however. Being between a heart attack and ALS is not a comfortable place to be. 

My research into CoQ10 has not progressed far. I intend to find out a lot more about it and I will keep readers posted as I work on it.