Beta Sitosterol Research

Beta-sitosterol is phytosterol or plant alcohol that is literally in every vegetable we eat. We already eat this every day but we just don't get enough of it. The typical American is estimated to eat only 200-400 mg a day while vegetarians probably eat about twice this much. This is surely one of the many reasons vegetarians are healthier and live longer. Actually the term "beta-sitosterol" in commerce refers to the natural combination of beta-sitosterol, stigmasterol, campesterol and brassicasterol as this is how they are made by nature in plants. There are no magic foods with high levels of phytosterols, but they can be inexpensively extracted from sugar cane pulp, soybeans and pine oil.

Upjohn Pharmaceuticals tried to make a prescription analog (chemical relative) of it decades ago for lowering cholesterol but did not succeed - the natural molecule works best. The scientific community has been well aware of it and clinics around the world have done extensive studies on both humans and animals including gall bladder, bile and liver functions since these are all part of the cholesterol metabolism. The major mechanism this seems to be effective is simply by preventing the dietary cholesterol from being absorbed in the intestines where fat is digested. Another way this seems to work is by increasing the flow of bile acids, which binds the cholesterol in the digestive track and excretes it in the feces.

A good study was done at the Wageningen Agricultural Institute in the Netherlands, the same clinic that did so much good research on trans fatty acids (Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 72, 2000, p. 1510-5). They gave men and women a margarine containing plant sterols and got very significant reductions in cholesterol as well as lower LDL levels in only three weeks. Why a clinic would give margarine to people after studying the negative effects of hydrogenated oils is another matter. Again, these were healthy subjects with normal cholesterol levels, yet they still got great benefits very quickly with no change in diet or exercise.

At Uppsala University in Sweden (Eur. Heart J. Supp. 1, 1999, p. S80-S90) the doctors wanted to give the volunteers the phytosterols in conjunction with a cholesterol lowering diet to see the results of a more comprehensive lifestyle program. The results were really impressive in that the men and women lowered total cholesterol a full 15% and LDL cholesterol a full 19% in less than a month. The shows the very dramatic results you can get with just adding some reasonable dietary changes even without any exercise program at all.

At the University of British Columbia at their St. Paul's Hospital (American Journal of Medicine 107 (1999) p. 588-94) a very impressive review was done complete with 86 references of using plant sterols to lower total cholesterol and LDL since 1951. They said of the recent research, " In 16 recently published human studies that used phytosterols to decrease plasma cholesterol levels in a total of 590 subjects, phytosterol therapy was accompanied by an average 10% decrease in total cholesterol and 13% decrease in LDL cholesterol levels." They found this worked best in high-fat diets; the worse the diet the more results the researchers got.This is the best review to date and should convince anyone of the effectiveness of sterols over drugs.

At McGill University in Montreal (Can. J. Physiol. Pharmacol. 75, 1997, p. 217-27) doctors did a review of the literature on beta-sitosterol and cholesterol metabolism. They researched in detail 18 major studies that used sitosterols to lower cholesterol and triglycerides. They concluded, "addition to diet of phytosterols represents an effective means of improving circulating lipid profiles to reduce risk of coronary heart disease." This study came complete with forty high quality references and left no doubt about the effectiveness of phytosterols on humans. Also at McGill University (Metabolism Clinic Experiments 47, 1998, p. 751-6) patients on a fixed diet were given sterols from pine oil for a mere ten days in a strict, randomized crossover study. This was not a low fat or low cholesterol diet at all. They successfully lowered both their total cholesterol and LDL levels in this short term placebo controlled experiment. They concluded, these results demonstrate the short term efficacy of pine oil plant sterols as cholesterol lowering agents"

A very interesting study was done at the Center for Human Nutrition in France (Ann. Nutr. Metab. 39, 1995, p. 291-5) in that healthy people with normal cholesterol levels were given beta- sitosterol to see if their normal levels could be lowered even further. We always think of studies as using unhealthy people with pathological cholesterol levels given supplements to make them normal again. Amazingly enough the healthy people lowered their normal cholesterol levels even more with no change in diet or exercise. In fact, they were a full 10% lower in only a month. This kind of effect is really fascinating. They said, "The present results may be of great interest in the prevention of high cholesterol diet-associated risks, especially in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. Since beta-sitosterol was so effective for people who didn't even need it, think what it will do for those people who do need to lower their blood lipids. They concluded, "These findings suggest that a significant lowering of plasma total and LDL cholesterol can be effected by a modest dietary intake of soybean phytosterols"

The University of Helsinki took a big interest in lowering cholesterol with plant sterol therapy back in 1988. The first study (Clinical Chimica Acta 178, p. 41-9) studied familial (genetic) hypercholesteremia. The higher the sterol levels they found in the patients blood the more cholesterol was excreted rather than absorbed. The second study was in 1989 (Metabolism Clinical Experiments 38, p. 136-40). Men were studied again for blood levels of sterols and they found the higher the levels the more cholesterol was excreted successfully. The third study in 1994 (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 59, p. 1338-46) studied vegetarians who eat twice as many plant sterols as normal people. They showed one reason vegetarians have lower cholesterol levels besides the food they eat is the efficiency of their cholesterol excretion due to their intakes of plant sterols. In the last study in 1999 (Current Opinion Lipidology 10, p. 9-14) they said, "Plant sterols may be useful for the treatment of hyper-cholesteremia they may have a potent cholesterol lowering effect as shown in normal and hypercholesteremic men and women with and without coronary heart disease and diabetes mellitus"

At the University of Kagawa in Tokyo two studies were done. The first was done on healthy young men who were given plant sterols for only five days. In this short time their cholesterol levels fell measurably (Joshi Eiyo Daigaku Kiyo 14, 1983, p. 165-72). The second study was done on healthy young women (same journal 15, 1984 p. 11-18) again giving them plant sterols for only five days. "Administration of phytosterol (mainly sitosterol) increased the output of fecal cholesterol." These were all healthy young Japanese people eating a traditional low-fat diet who did not have a cholesterol problem to begin with, yet they received measurable results in only five days.

At the University of California in San Diego men were isolated in a hospital ward and fed 500 mg of cholesterol and then beta-sitosterol supplements (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 35, 1982, p. 697-700). This resulted in a 42% decrease in cholesterol absorption in the intestines. They said, "Evidently, the judicious addition of beta-sitosterol to meals containing cholesterol rich foods will result in a decrease in cholesterol absorption with a consequent decrease in plasma cholesterol"

The research is so extensive and wide ranging over the last 30 years that it is hard to find and count all the studies. How something so studied, proven, effective and well known to the scientific and medical community has stayed outside of public knowledge is hard to believe.

Many studies have been done in other areas of illness that suggest beta-sitosterol may have great potential in other areas such as prostate disease, diabetes, blood clotting, ulcers, cancer prevention, tumors, immunity, inflammation and other conditions. These studies have been conducted at such institutions as the State University of New York, National Institutes of Health, University of Japan, University of Valencia, University of Stellengbosch and other prestigious clinics who are willing to study an inexpensive natural plant extract that cannot be patented or sold be prescription. You will see more research and more benefits for beta-sitosterol every year.