You don’t need to be in alternative medicine to know that statin drugs are a bad idea.

These days, even the doctors who once gave them out to nearly everyone are waking up to the fact that cholesterol drugs do plenty of harm and very little good.

And now, “mainstream” doctors are turning to what was once dismissed as “alternative” medicine to bring cholesterol levels down — including the simple lifestyle changes that I’ve been advocating from the beginning.

It’s not exactly a radical idea, but I’m glad to see the rest of the country catching on — and some are even bragging about their results in places such as the Journal of the American Medical Association.

One recent series of editorials there was a debate between two competing mainstream teams trying to treat a hypothetical 55-year-old patient with high cholesterol levels who was otherwise healthy.

A decade ago, I’m sure they all would have said “statins.”

Today, a set of doctors who said they’d use that approach were practically booed right out of the journal — with one team of doctors correctly pointing out that they’d have to treat 100 patients like that hypothetical man for five years to prevent even a single heart attack.

And if that’s all that happened — a heart attack was prevented — maybe it would be worthwhile.

But, as Dr. Rita Redberg and Dr. William Katz of the University of San Francisco, California wrote in the journal, at least one of those 100 patients will end up with diabetes because of those meds and a whopping 20 percent will experience the notorious statin side effects (and other studies like the Jupiter trial have shown risk closer to 25 percent).

Those include serious and debilitating muscle pain, fatigue, memory problems, cataracts, and even sexual dysfunction.

Now, I don’t know if this means these mainstream docs have gone alternative or if I’m suddenly mainstream. To be honest, it doesn’t matter to me — all that matters is that patients are finally getting the common-sense approach to cholesterol control they should have been given all along.

Better late than never.

For the most advanced cardiovascular testing contact the Stengler Center for Integrative Medicine at 760-274-2377.

If Earl Grey tea is known for anything other than its noble name, it’s the distinct smell of bergamot.

That’s an orange grown in the Mediterranean, especially the Calabria region of southern Italy, and new research shows it can do so much more than add fragrance to a cup of tea.

In fact, this stuff is nothing short of a citrus miracle – because one month of bergamot extract can help slash your cholesterol levels, cut your blood sugar down to size, and even help you to lose weight.

Go brew your own cup of Earl Grey while I break this one down.

More than 200 Italian patients with a history of high cholesterol were given a bergamot extract from Australia called BergaMet. After just one month, their LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels plunged by 39 percent while their HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels shot up by 41 percent.

The bergamot supplement appears to work a little like statins in that it blocks the enzyme that creates cholesterol. But since it uses a different mechanism, it doesn’t appear to cause any of the notorious statin side effects like muscle pain and liver damage.

That alone should be enough to make bergamot smell even better than it does already – but that’s not all it did: The patients in the study also saw a 22 percent reduction in their blood sugar levels, which could help reduce their risk of metabolic syndrome and even diabetes.

And for the icing on the cake, another study under way in Australia finds it may even help people to lose weight. One badly obese patient taking part in that one lost nearly 30 pounds in the first month alone.

The “catch” here is that cup of tea you’re sipping on is a good start, but it won’t come close to matching the levels given to patients in the new studies. You can find bergamot extract here and there, but they’re not all that popular yet – and many of them are geared towards aromatherapy and shouldn’t be ingested.

So if you want to give this stuff a try, speak to a naturopathic physician about the best way to get it first.

And go ahead and brew that cup of tea anyway. It certainly can’t hurt – and it tastes great, too.

Next time your doctor says “cut back on the salt, or else” ask him one question.

Or else what?

He’ll tell you how all that salt is responsible for the high blood pressure that leads to heart disease. But if you’ve tried to cut back on salt, then you already know how well it works — not at all.

It’s not just you.

A low-salt diet is actually scientifically proven to have little to no impact on your BP levels, and a new study confirms it: Researchers in Europe say cutting back on sodium trims just 1 percent off a healthy person’s BP levels, and 3.5 percent off those of someone battling hypertension.

And in exchange for those meaningless dips in blood pressure, patients who stuck to the low-salt lifestyle saw a 7 percent surge in deadly triglycerides and a 2.5 percent overall boost in cholesterol levels.

In other words, if your BP spikes a little and your doc tells you to stick to a low-salt diet to avoid hypertension meds, he’ll almost certainly end up giving you those meds anyway — and a statin to boot.

Consider that a bonus.

If this was the first study of its kind, it would be easy to be a little skeptical — and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being skeptical. But it’s not — and it’s not the second or third study either.

In fact, it’s the fourth study just this year to find no benefit to a low-salt diet — not to mention the dozens of other studies that have reached the same conclusion over the years.

If you’re concerned about blood pressure, forget about salt. Cut back on sugar instead — because the research on this has been remarkably consistent: People who consume the most sugar have the highest blood pressure levels.

That’s why one of the most immediate benefits of a low-carb diet is a swift reduction in blood pressure.

Once you get the sugar out, don’t focus on salt so much as your salt-to-potassium ratio. Thanks to processed foods, most people get more salt than potassium. In reality, you should get about three times as much potassium as salt.

Make those two changes, and you can hit the saltshaker to your heart’s content — and never have to worry about your BP levels again.

Pfizer is getting ready to take a multibillion-dollar loss this fall when it loses patent protection on the best-selling drug of all time. But don’t expect them to sit back and watch Lipitor’s $11 billion a year in sales go down the drain. The Wall Street Journal says the company is hatching a plan to have its cholesterol-lowering drug sold over the counter.

And if they get their way, you can bet it won’t just be sold in pharmacies anymore. I’m thinking 7-11, McDonald’s, and Dunkin Donuts, for starters, where Lipitor can be billed as the antidote to cholesterol-laden convenience foods.

That’s not nearly as far-fetched as it sounds. Some researchers have already proposed doing exactly that. (Read about it here.)

But if there’s anything as bad for you as a fast food meal on your plate, it’s a statin in your body. I don’t care what you’ve been told. These drugs are bad news.

Along with the notorious risk of muscle weakness and debilitating pain, statins have also been linked to kidney failure, liver damage, cataracts, joint and tendon problems, sexual issues, and even an increased risk of diabetes.

That’s right… a drug that’s supposed to keep a supposed risk factor for diabetes in check — cholesterol — can actually help bring the disease on.

Here’s a better plan: Skip the fast food and skip the statins. Basic lifestyle changes can do a much better job of keeping cholesterol levels under control anyway.

The one bit of good news here is that Big Pharma is 0-for-2 when it comes to getting statins approved for over-the-counter sales. Merck’s plan for OTC Mevacor was rejected by the feds at least three times, along with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s bid for nonprescription Pravachol.

Normally, I spend a lot of time ripping FDA decisions — and, let’s face it, there’s a lot to rip. But in this case, the agency has managed to get it right — and they’ve already put Pfizer on notice that the bar for over-the-counter Lipitor has been set pretty high.

“They would have to provide data to show that consumers understand the treatment and recognize that cholesterol-monitoring is required,” FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess told Bloomberg News.

That’s not going to be easy, because Burgess quickly added that previous studies have shown that patients don’t get it.

“Most study participants made mistakes and chose to take the proposed over-the-counter statin when they should not have done that,” she was quoted as saying.

On the other hand, statins such as Zocor are already available over the counter in the U.K. — so maybe it’s only a matter of time before the FDA follows suit.