Why is cholesterol so scary?

Because you don’t feel it piling up in your arteries. One minute, you’re sitting at your desk, or walking through the supermarket. And the next…

…Well, you can guess what cardiac arrest does to half-a-million Americans each year. You see why I had to find out: what the heck is happening in Japan?

19.7% of Japanese people smoke. (30.3% of men.) Yet they’re the second longest-living country in the world – averaging 84.74 years old. As I write this, the oldest man who ever lived was from Japan. Jiroemon Kimura died in 2013, aged 116 years, 54 days. How?

Might it have been something in Jiroemon’s drink?

Perhaps. You see, there are 2 types of cholesterol:

LDL – ‘bad’ cholesterol – can wreak havoc inside your arteries. If there’s too much, cells inside the arteries are forced to soak it up like a sponge.

Over time, they swell and harden, creating artery-blocking plaque.

Meanwhile, HDL – the ‘good’ cholesterol – is thought to fight this process. HDL carries the nasty LDL cholesterol away from your arteries – back to the liver where its destroyed.

Green tea gives your HDL cholesterol a helping hand.

Of 6000 Japanese women, those who drank at least 5 cups of green tea each day were 50% less likely to suffer a stroke. Because tea is a potent anti-oxidant. It stops the ‘bad’ LDL-type cholesterol from reacting with oxygen in your body.

This means it cannot enter your arteries and it cannot block them up.

But guzzling green tea can’t be the only secret, can it?

Not if you see what’s happening in the Mediterranean.

Take Italians Vs. Brits.

Italians smoke more, earn less, spend less on healthcare…yet they live 18 months longer! Could it be their high-HDL cholesterol diet?

A Harvard study suggests it might. They followed women in Greece who ate olive oil more than once a day. Turns out they were 25% less likely to develop breast cancer. Olive oil was tested again on Spanish women.

Those who ate 2 teaspoons a day cut their cancer risk 30-35%.

Yes, you could boost your lifespan simply by cooking with olive oil. It really is that easy. Ancel Keys, the famous cholesterol researcher, claimed those who use olive oil as their prime source of fat are least likely to die of anything.

Oh, and by the way, Ancel Keys lived to 100. So it’s worth taking his advice on board.

How does olive oil work?

Olive oil is a monounsaturated fat.

It takes longer to oxidise than virtually any other fat you can eat. This means it cannot penetrate the arteries as quickly. It makes vitamin E more effective, too.

Like green tea, vitamin E blocks LDL cholesterol from entering the arteries. Meanwhile, it rejuvenates arteries which are already damaged.

The University of Mississippi’s Arteriosclerosis research lab tested this.

A group of monkeys were kept on a high-fat diet. Subjects who were given vitamin E had only one-fifth of the artery blockage. With established coronary artery disease, it cleared 60% of plaque.

Vitamin E literally reverses aging in the arteries. Olive oil gives it rocket fuel to keep up the fight.

What else should you do to switch off bad cholesterol?

3 things:

1. Supplement vitamin E.

If you’re not, I can pretty much guarantee you’re not getting enough. Here’s why.

2. Take vitamin C, too.

Like olive oil, vitamin C rejuvenates burnt-up vitamin E. And it’s water-soluble. This means it can enter tissues other anti-oxidants can’t reach.

Let me explain how much you need and why.

3. Take selenium.

A Finnish study discovered low selenium levels increases your risk of heart disease 300%.

“Adequate selenium is unquestionably necessary if one is to attain optimal health and full life span potential,” says Sheldon Saul Hendler PhD.