Cholesterol Down: Ten simple steps to lower your cholesterol in four weeks—without prescription drugs (Random House/Crown Publishing, December, 2006) by Janet Bond Brill, Ph.D., R.D., LDN, one of the country’s leading nutrition, diet, health and fitness experts.

Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: All Americans are at risk for heart attacks and stroke, so everyone, young and old, should be eating heart-healthy foods and exercising. My Cholesterol Down Plan was written like a “diet” book. If you follow the plan, you will see results in 4 weeks, namely, your LDL cholesterol will decrease significantly.

There are 3 main groups of people who will benefit the most from following the Cholesterol Down Plan:

1. Those otherwise healthy Americans with high LDL cholesterol that are unwilling to begin taking prescription cholesterol-lowering medication (for a lifetime) to treat their high cholesterol.

2. Those individuals with high LDL cholesterol that have tried taking physician-prescribed statin medication but simply can not tolerate the side effects.

3. Those individuals already taking prescription cholesterol-lowering medication that have not reached their LDL goal and are concerned about increasing the dosage (the risk of significant side effects increases at higher dosages). Combining my Cholesterol Down Plan with prescription medication will boost statin success.

Q: What is the book about?
A: I am a professional nutritionist and exercise physiologist specializing in cardiovascular disease prevention, health and fitness. I began to notice a pattern of anecdotal reports among my patients. Many had high cholesterol and were either unwilling to begin taking a “lifetime” medication or else had tried various statin cholesterol-lowering medications and were unable to tolerate the debilitating side effects. I was repeatedly asked if there was a “natural” alternative to lowering “bad” cholesterol. On a different note, however, what really peaked my interest in “natural combination therapy” is more of a personal story. My own father had his first heart attack at age 45 (a major risk factor for me). He died of a heart attack several years later. Naturally I became concerned when a couple of years ago my own “bad” cholesterol reading was abnormally high (which was shocking news to me as I am a marathon runner who has been a semi-vegetarian for decades). At this same time, there happened to be some new cutting edge scientific research that involved combining several foods (all scientifically proven to lower cholesterol individually) together on a daily basis. The combination of the foods magnifies the cholesterol-lowering effect such that it equates with the cholesterol-lowering effect of statin medication, only without the side effects! I formulated my own plan using 10 steps in conjunction with a Mediterranean-style of eating. The LDL-lowering results were simply miraculous both in myself and with my patients. I decided to write the book to help others benefit from my Cholesterol Down Plan and hopefully to help people prevent cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in men and women in this country and the Western world.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: I am an expert in the field of cardiovascular disease prevention and I have tried and tested this diet and exercise plan on myself and my patients and it works! What’s more, it is meticulously researched and based on sound scientific information…a rarity among the plethora of diet books on the market.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?

A: *Based on the new cutting edge science of natural combination therapy.

  1. Written by a true expert in the field of diet, nutrition and health.
  2. Written in the form of a “diet book,” follow the program and you will have measurable results in just 4 weeks.
  3. Includes tools to help you stay on track: a daily checklist, 2 weeks of sample menus (including eating out at popular restaurants), and over 100 delicious Mediterranean-inspired healthy recipes that taste great and are easy to make.
  4. Other books on cholesterol and health are filled with boring information that overloads readers with dry, technical information. Cholesterol Down is a simple, well-written and easy-to-follow plan that really works!

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: People need to become aware of the powerful effect that simple foods and light exercise can have on preventing disease. We should all heed the wise words of Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine (460-377 BC), “Let food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be thy food.”