Inegy - how does it reduce cholesterol?
I have been prescribed a drug called Inegy by my doctor .
Inegy (In-ej-je) works to reduce your cholesterol in two ways. It reduces the cholesterol absorbed in your digestive tract, as well as the cholesterol your body makes by itself. It contains two ingredients -
Ezetimibe - which is a cholesterol absorption inhibitor. These are a new group of drugs used to lower cholesterol levels.
They work by stopping cholesterol being taken out of the food you eat. The cholesterol can’t get from the food in your gut to your blood. Ezetimibe localises at the brush border of the small intestine and inhibits the absorption of cholesterol, leading to a decrease in the delivery of intestinal cholesterol to the liver.
Inegy also contains a statin called Simvastatin. Statins are supposed to reduce the amount of bad LDL cholesterol in your blood.Statins seem to work better than anything else to treat high cholesterol.
In the UK You can buy a low dose (10 mg) of simvastatin over the counter at pharmacies. Its brand name is Zocor Heart-Pro. This type of simvastatin is for people with a moderate risk of having a heart attack or a stroke.
Statins interfere with the liver’s ability to make cholesterol. They do this partly by stopping the work of an enzyme that tells the liver to make more cholesterol. (An enzyme is a substance that assists a chemical reaction in the body.)
Statins reduce the amount of bad (LDL) cholesterol that your liver makes. This causes the level of bad cholesterol in your blood to fall. When this happens the liver thinks your body has a cholesterol shortage, so it takes up more bad cholesterol from your blood. This means there is less bad cholesterol in your blood to clog up blood vessels.