| Red Rice Yeast Extract 600mg 120c
Chinese red yeast Monascus purpureus (grown on white rice, by the way) is a traditional Chinese food coloring and herbal remedy. The dried yeast contains a family of compounds that inhibit HMG-CoA reductase — an enzyme responsible for making cholesterol in the body. These inhibitors are similar in chemical structure to the expensive ‘statin’ drugs that are used as prescription remedies for high cholesterol.
In clinical studies RYR has produced reductions in LDL cholesterol by about 31% and triglycerides by 34%. In animal studies a reduction in atherosclerotic plaques has also been shown. Researchers in China have recently found that feeding a Red-Yeast Rice extract to chickens results in eggs with substantially lower cholesterol content. Such eggs will soon be available commercially — in some countries, at least.
The government of the State of California requires us to tell readers that Red Rice Yeast contains a chemical (lovastatin) that causes birth defects — despite a lack of evidence for this claim. The truth is that when pregnant rats were fed lovastatin at doses greater than 400 mg/kg/day (equivalent to 27000 mg/day for a 150 lb human), there were birth defects in the offspring; the researchers who conducted the study attributed these birth defects to nutritional deficiencies caused by high-dose drug-damage to the mothers’ digestive tracts, not to any effect of lovastatin on the rat fetuses. Nevertheless, to comply with California’s deceptive law, we present the following “Warning: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm.” |
