Policosanol, can it help?
Policosanol is not a single substance, but a mix of different alcohols obtained from sources such as sugar cane and beeswax, and also yams. Don’t think it will affect your blood sugar, because although sugar cane provides a component of policosanol, that component does not itself contain sugar. The main component is octacosanol, for the chemists among you a straight chain primary alcohol with 28 carbon atoms. It also helps to reduce LDL cholesterol and increase HDL cholesterol to the benefit of your arteries.
It has been said that policosanol benefits diabetics and women who have gone through the menopause. This is not strictly correct because the substance has nothing to do with diabetes or the menopause: it will not affect either. What it does do is to reduce the LDL cholesterol that both sets of people are more susceptible to, but it does not affect their primary condition. In fact, anybody with a desire to reduce their ‘cholesterol level’ will benefit from taking a supplement of Policosanol which has no significant side effects. Pregnant women and those breast-feeding their children should seek their doctor’s advice before taking policosanol – or any other supplement.
Policosanol and Your Cholesterol Levels
Policosanol can reduce your LDL cholesterol levels. Although cholesterol is an essential component in the biochemical synthesis of steroid hormones such as testosterone, and is use by your system to repair damage to blood vessels, you can have too much of it in your blood. Cholesterol is not soluble in your blood, and needs lipids to carry it around. There are two lipids, the low density kind (LDL) and the high density kind (HDL), and it is the low density type, or LDL cholesterol, that undergoes oxidation by small free radical molecules and drops out of solution to deposit on the interior walls of your arteries and eventually, blocks them.
This doesn’t happen with the high density lipids, or HDL cholesterol, so that is known as ‘good’ cholesterol. So anything that reduces your LDL levels and increases your HDL cholesterol levels is going to be beneficial to you. Statins can do that, but they have many undesirable side effects with some people that are tolerated because of the importance of controlling your LDL cholesterol levels.
By taking a supplement of policosanol, extracted from various sources such as beeswax, yams and sugar cane (but itself sugar free) test have shown that you can reduce your LDL cholesterol by 25% and increase your HDL cholesterol by between 21% and 28%. That’s a result worth looking at, and there are no reasons why you should not take policosanol as an alternative to statins – unless you are pregnant or a nursing mother, when you should seek the advice of your doctor first.