05/18/2026
Functional MP here 👋 yes this is real and honestly its one of the most overlooked things in cholesterol management
Most doctors look at high cholesterol and immediately go to statins. But they almost never ask the most important question which is WHY is cholesterol building up in your blood in the first place
Your liver is the organ that clears LDL cholesterol from your bloodstream. It has receptors on its cells that pull LDL out of your blood and flush it through bile. About 80 to 90% of all LDL clearance happens in the liver. When those receptors work properly your cholesterol basically regulates itself
The problem is after decades of processing medications, alcohol, processed food, toxins, fat accumulates inside liver cells. And when that happens those receptors get buried and stop working efficiently. So cholesterol just builds up. Not because youre eating too much of it. Because the organ thats supposed to remove it cant keep up
This is why dieting barely works for most people. Youre cutting the input by maybe 10 to 15% while the organ responsible for clearing the other 80% is compromised. And its why statins are a bandaid. They force your liver to pull more cholesterol out of the blood but they dont fix WHY the liver wasnt doing it properly in the first place. The moment you stop taking them your numbers go right back up
This is also why I dont usually recommend things like red yeast rice, fish oil or plant sterols on their own. Red yeast rice is basically a weak natural statin so you're doing the same thing as the drug just less effectively. Fish oil helps triglycerides but does almost nothing for LDL clearance. And plant sterols just block absorption in the gut which is only addressing that small 15% input side. None of them touch the actual organ thats failing to clear the cholesterol
What I focus on with my patients is supporting the liver directly so it can actually do its job again. There are three things that matter most in my experience. Silymarin from milk thistle which protects the cell membranes where those receptors sit and has been shown to significantly lower LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. Curcuminoids which calm the inflammation thats damaging liver function. And inositol which helps the liver clear the fat thats causing the whole problem
What I usually see when patients start supporting the liver properly is energy comes back first, usually within the first couple weeks. Bloating goes down. Then by month 2 or 3 the bloodwork starts reflecting it. And it holds because youre not suppressing anything youre actually fixing what was broken
Quality matters a lot here though. Most liver supplements on amazon are low dose generic extracts that arent standardized to the active compounds that actually do the work. I usually recommend European formulations because they tend to be significantly better because the regulatory standards are stricter and the quality control on extracts is much higher
I know this was long but I see so many people cutting out eggs and eating oatmeal twice a day thinking thats going to fix their numbers when the real issue is an organ they never thought to support. Hope this helps 🙏
EDIT: since a lot of you are asking what I recommend specifically, the one I usually point my patients to is Happy Liver by Ritual Labs. Its European pharmaceutical grade and has all three at the clinical doses. I know theyre not on Amazon yet but I think they ship from the US through their site. Youd have to check 😊
