Robert Kowalski's personal story is legendary. By the age of forty-one, he had suffered a heart attack and had undergone two coronary bypass surgeries. A traditional dietary approach to lowering his cholesterol failed dismally, and faced with the unpleasant alternative of a lifetime on medication, he created a program that proved astonishingly effective for him -- and legions of others worldwide who use it.

Today Kowalski has beaten heart disease, lives an unlimited and vigorous lifestyle, and uses no prescription drugs. Now, with new information about risk factors, exercise, and supplements, The New 8-Week Cholesterol Cure is even more powerful in fighting heart disease.

It includes:

The facts about homocysteine and the deadly cholesterol Lp(a)

A diet that jump starts cholesterol reduction

The heart-healthy secrets of niacin, other B vitamins, and safe supplements

The latest findings on exercise

New cholesterol-testing methods

New heart-healthy products…and more!

For the past several decades, coronary heart disease (CHD) has been the number one killer of men and women in the United States and in most of the Western world. Doctors have long proclaimed it to be a polygenic disease, that is, a disease that has many causes involving both genetic traits and lifestyle choices. Today the list of contributing factors has grown longer than ever.

At first glance, this may appear to make the situation more complicated. But the good news is that as we identify those risks and learn how to eliminate them, we come to realize that heart disease is largely preventable.

Heart disease begins in childhood. The insidious process of clogging the arteries progresses quietly, and as early as the teenage years, tests can reveal significant blockage. Obviously, the time to begin preventive measures is as soon as possible.

That said, it's never too late to start prevention. By identifying your personal risk factors and dealing with them effectively, you can absolutely and unequivocally stop the progression of disease at any point in the cycle. Assuming that CHD hasn't already developed to the point of putting you at risk of a heart attack or making you a candidate for bypass surgery, you can halt the disease process and perhaps even reverse it before one of these cardiac events occurs. This is called primary prevention. And even if you have already had a heart attack, otherwise known as a myocardial infarction (MI), bypass surgery, or angioplasty, you can still take the measures needed to make sure you stop the progression of the disease. That is called secondary prevention.

Sadly, most people lack either the knowledge or the incentive to take preventive measures to heart. This is true for both primary and secondary prevention. I understand that to some extent: Human nature makes us all feel that "It won't happen to me." But what about those who have already had a run-in with heart disease and continue to live their lives as they always have? To me that's like seeing a car or truck speeding down the street and stepping off the curb anyway.

A growing number of cardiologists and other physicians are becoming advocates of what is termed "aggressive secondary prevention" -- that is to say, taking all the steps necessary to not only modify but completely eliminate known risk factors such as elevated cholesterol levels or high blood pressure. My personal hero among those doctors is Sidney Smith, past president of the American Heart Association (AHA) and professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Smith, who used his AHA presidency as a pulpit to preach the gospel of aggressive secondary prevention to his peers in cardiology, has done much to change the way doctors treat their patients.

I go a step further. Certainly it's logical to do everything possible to avoid a second heart attack, but why not be just as aggressive in avoiding the first one? That's what this book is all about: aggressive primary, as well as secondary, prevention. Heart disease is the enemy. A ruthless killer. Worse than anything dreamed up in Hollywood horror movies or ancient myths. Now is the time to pick up that sword of aggressive prevention and fight back.

Today we have gone way beyond cholesterol in identifying the many risk factors that contribute to heart disease. For now, we can't do much about changing the genes that make one particularly susceptible to CHD. Maybe someday soon. But by realizing that others in our families have fallen victim, we are forewarned and forearmed. Now let's turn to the risk factors.

Way back in the 1950s, doctors in Framingham...

Robert E. Kowalski a medical journalist for more than thirty-six years, devised this program for his own cholesterol problem when all else failed. By the age of forty-one he had suffered a heart attack and had had two coronary bypass surgeries, after which he created The 8-Week Cholesterol Cure to reduce cholesterol for himself and the many others who have this need.