Cholibrium Review: What It Is, What It Costs and Where to Buy It

What Cholibrium is

Cholibrium is a capsule supplement from Simple Promise, a brand whose sales pages give an address in Camas, Washington. Each bottle holds 60 capsules, a 30-day supply at two a day with a glass of water. It is sold on a ClickBank sales page at cb.cholibrium.com and in the brand’s own online store at the same prices. The written sales page builds up to a mystery “white carb” you eat before bed, and only later reveals it to be a mix of mushrooms it calls Okinawan, which the capsules supply as powders and extracts.

Illustrations by Health and Wellness Studies. The cover and price-card photos are made from the product images the seller lets reviewers use.

What is on the label

The ClickBank sales page shows no label, but the Supplement Facts the brand publishes list, per two capsules:

The pitch, in brief

The written sales page promises to lower cholesterol “by 80 points” and is told by “Robert Johnson”, a man who has a heart attack, argues with his doctor to stay off statins and turns his numbers around with mushroom capsules; a footnote says his name has been changed. Along the way it makes several claims:

• “The first-ever statin was derived from food”: it came from a mould growing on a rice sample, not from a mushroom or a food, and it was never sold as a medicine. The next section has the real story.
• Only 20% of cholesterol comes from food: roughly right, because the liver makes most of it. That is exactly why statins, which slow the liver’s production, lower LDL so much more than any food or fibre.
• Experts: the page quotes a Harvard report, a preventive cardiologist and a Swiss researcher, then says in the small print that none of them is associated with Cholibrium.
• Urgency: a dated “stock levels are limited” warning repeats throughout, the page claims 31,169 success stories, and it says the price could have been $249 a bottle, a figure nobody pays.

The statin story: what really happened

The page builds its case on Akira Endo, the Japanese scientist who discovered the first statin, and suggests he found it in food. His own account, published in 2010, tells it differently. Endo guessed that moulds and mushrooms might make substances that block the body’s cholesterol production, and after thousands of tests in the early 1970s found one in a blue-green mould, Penicillium citrinum, growing on a rice sample from a grain shop in Kyoto. That compound, compactin, never became a medicine: its development stopped around 1980 amid reports of tumours in dogs given very high doses. The first statin to reach patients was lovastatin, approved in the United States in September 1987.

Statins today are made to exact doses and have been tested in trials with tens of thousands of people. Nothing on Cholibrium’s label is a statin, and the label does not claim any statin content.

Where the “80 points” comes from

The headline figure comes from a 2003 study in the journal Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry on yamabushitake, the Japanese name for lion’s mane. It was done in rats fed a high-fat diet, which were given a substance that lion’s mane releases when it is grown in liquid culture, not the mushroom powder in the capsule. Their total cholesterol fell by about a third compared with untreated rats. No people took part. The page’s other figures follow the same pattern:

• Maitake, “21% lower cholesterol”: a four-week study in rats whose diet was 5% mushroom fibre.
• Reishi and blood pressure: measured in a strain of rats bred to have high blood pressure, using a specially digested extract.
• Cordyceps and chaga: studies in hamsters, rats and diabetic mice; the cordyceps study used a compound from a different species.

What happened when people took reishi

Reishi is the best-studied mushroom in the formula, and the results in people are disappointing:

• The trial the page cites: 26 people with borderline raised blood pressure or cholesterol took 1.44 g of reishi a day and a placebo, for 12 weeks each. HDL rose and triglycerides fell in the first period only, carry-over effects prevented a full analysis, and blood pressure did not change.
• A larger trial: 84 people with type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome took 3 g of reishi a day, with or without cordyceps, or a placebo for 16 weeks. The mushrooms had no effect on blood sugar or any other measure.
• A Cochrane review: five trials with 398 people found that reishi did not significantly lower total or LDL cholesterol.

Mushroom fibre is real, and soluble fibres do lower LDL: in a meta-analysis of 58 trials, about 3.5 g of oat beta-glucan a day lowered LDL by about 7 mg/dL. But Cholibrium’s whole daily dose is 1.33 g of mushroom material, and the label does not say how much of it is beta-glucan.

Who is behind it

• The seller: Simple Promise, part of Truegenics, with a mailing address in Camas, Washington, and a returns centre in Federalsburg, Maryland. Support is on 1-800-259-9522 and at support@mysimplepromise.com.
• The stories: the footnotes say the narrator and a customer called “Jason” are real customers whose names have been changed, and that individual results may vary.
• Who it is aimed at: the seller tells promoters its best buyers include “anyone currently on statins looking for a natural, side-effect-free alternative”.

What the research shows, at a glance

Never swap a statin for a supplement

The sales story ends with the narrator off statins after a heart attack, and this is the part of the pitch we would most warn readers about. After a heart attack, cholesterol-lowering medicine is standard care because it works: in an analysis of 26 large trials with about 170,000 people, every 39 mg/dL drop in LDL cholesterol cut major heart attacks, strokes and artery procedures by about a fifth. No mushroom supplement has been shown to prevent a heart attack. If statin side effects bother you, tell your doctor: a lower dose, a different statin or another kind of medicine often solves the problem.

Know your numbers first

High cholesterol causes no symptoms, so the only way to know where you stand is a blood test. Ask your doctor about:

• LDL cholesterol: the main target, and the number most treatments are judged by.
• Triglycerides and HDL: alcohol, sugar, weight and exercise affect these most.
• Your 10-year risk: your chance of a heart attack or stroke decides whether you need medicine, more than any single number.
• Family history: very high LDL from a young age can run in families and needs medical treatment.

What actually lowers cholesterol

Our guide to cholesterol supplements compares the options with the best evidence.

Safety and who should check first

• Medicines: the mushrooms were well tolerated in trials, but several are studied for effects on blood sugar and the immune system. Ask a pharmacist first if you take medicine for diabetes or blood pressure, blood thinners or drugs that suppress the immune system.
• Allergies: avoid it if you are allergic to mushrooms or moulds.
• Prescribed medicine: keep taking any cholesterol medicine your doctor has prescribed.
• Chest pain is an emergency: call emergency services for chest pain or pressure, shortness of breath, or pain spreading to the arm, jaw or back.

Which package makes sense

Judging a cholesterol supplement takes a blood test before you start and another after two to three months, and three bottles ($147, or $49 each) cover that gap. One bottle ($59) is enough to see how you get on with it. Six bottles ($234) give the lowest price, $39 a bottle, but commit you to six months before you know whether it works; the 365-day refund covers empty bottles, so what you risk is the return postage and the wait rather than the full price. The three- and six-bottle packages add three e-books on desserts, smoothies and food labels.

Is it worth it?

As a mushroom supplement, Cholibrium is fairly priced, has a partly open label and one of the longest refunds we have seen. As a way to lower cholesterol, it rests on animal studies, and its best-studied mushroom did not lower LDL in people. Our full Cholibrium review scores it 2.9 out of 5.

How the 365-day refund works

1. Post the bottles: used, unused or empty, to the Simple Promise Returns Centre, c/o SISK Fulfillment Service, 1900 Industrial Park Road, PO Box 463, Federalsburg, MD 21632, with your name and order number on a sheet of paper inside.
2. Tell support: call 1-800-259-9522 or contact support with a photo of the postage receipt or the tracking number.
3. Wait for the money: processing takes up to two weeks after the bottles arrive, then 10–14 business days for your bank. The policy mentions no prepaid label, so the return postage is yours.