There are several natural foods and supplements that have been shown to decrease bad cholesterol and/or increase good cholesterol. Do these herbal remedies for treating high cholesterol work? Yes. Will munching handfuls of flaxseeds and drinking quarts of hawthorn berry tea offset the effects of a diet otherwise devoid of fresh leafy vegetables? Not likely.

While there are several herbs that can lower cholesterol levels, it’s important to realize that manipulating numbers is not the same thing as treating imbalance. Just because a supplement lowers bad cholesterol levels doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s doing anything for the underlying imbalance that caused the high cholesterol levels in the first place.

Herbal supplements for treating high cholesterol, like pharmaceutical drugs, should be used as one part of a comprehensive treatment plan for balancing healthy and ‘bad cholesterol’ levels.

Of course eating a balanced diet rich in natural sources of protein, simple fats, fresh veggies and fruits gets cholesterol levels, good and bad, pointed in the right directions, but while you’re steering away from transfats and greasy burgers, make the most of your efforts by supplementing your diet with a few herbs known to lower LDL cholesterol and/or improve HDL cholesterol.

1. Hawthorn berries

A tablespoon of hawthorn berries, steeped in hot water or tea, lowers cholesterol, improves digestion, increases circulation and tastes great! Not too keen on boiling berries? Adding 10-20 drops hawthorn extract to a hot beverage will produce the same results.

Though more clinical studies on the relationship between human cholesterol levels and hawthorn are needed, there have been some interesting findings so far. In several cholesterol studies involving rats, hawthorn tincture (made from hawthorn berries) was shown to be a powerful tool in the removal of ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol from blood vessels.

2. Flaxseeds

Eating between 1 and 5 tablespoons of flax seeds each day can lower bad cholesterol by 20%. In a study involving 40 patients with cholesterol grater than 240 mg/dL consumed 20 grams of ground flaxseed as compared to treating cholesterol with statin drugs. After a period of 60 days total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides were significantly reduced. In this study participants who received flaxseed did just as well as patients given statin drugs.

3. Red Yeast Rice

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published the results of their double-blind, placebo-controlled study demonstrating that “red yeast rice significantly reduces total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and total triglyceride concentrations compared with placebo and provides a new, novel, food-based approach to lowering cholesterol in the general population.”

It has been discovered that red yeast rice contains several active compounds effective in treating high cholesterol. Most notably, lovastatin, the active ingredient in the prescription drug Mevacor comes from red yeast rice.