The dangers of low blood cholesterol
LOW BLOOD CHOLESTEROL AND CANCER
Countries with diets high in saturated fat also tend to have high levels of colon cancer. In 1974 a review of the Framingham data and those from the Keys' Seven Countries' study was carried out, expecting to show that the cancer could also be blamed on high cholesterol. However the opposite was found - those with colon cancer had cholesterol levels that were lower than the average. Reports of more than twenty studies into the relation between blood cholesterol and cancer have been published since 1972. Most have reported an association between low blood cholesterol and cancer.
Cholesterol studies in patients who developed colon cancer, conclude that it is the long term lowering of cholesterol levels that increases the risk of developing cancer. The average blood cholesterol level of those who developed cancer declined to 5.56 mmol/L, and yet the medical guidelines remain to reduce everyone's levels to below 5.2mmol/L (Winawer et al 1990; JAMA: 263.) The results of a 3-year study, involving 11,500 patients, published in the European Heart Journal in 2003, found that the low cholesterol group - total cholesterol below 4.5 mmol/L - had a relative risk of death 2.27 times higher than those with high cholesterol. The most common cause of death in the low cholesterol group was cancer, while the risk of cardiac death was the same in both groups.
LOW CHOLESTEROL MEANS MORE STROKES
A very large study from Japan, covering two decades, concluded that low levels of blood cholesterol also increased the incidence of stroke. (Takashi Shimamoto et al 1989; Circulation: 3) Supporting their findings were the results of a follow-up of 350,000 men screened for the MRFIT study in the United States that showed that the risk of death from cerebral haemorrhage in middle-aged men was six times greater if they had low cholesterol levels. In 1997, results from a study entitled Cholesterol and Mortality: 30 Years of Follow-up from the Framingham Study were published. The researchers from the Framingham study group said that "High serum cholesterol level is not related to the incidence of stroke." This in-depth study showed that after the age of 50, there is no increased overall death rate associated with high cholesterol! There was however a direct association between low levels (or dropping levels) of cholesterol and increased death. They concluded that "Intakes of fat and type of fat were not related to the incidence of the combined outcome of all cardiovascular diseases or to total cardiovascular mortality" (Gillman et al 1997; JAMA :278)
LOW CHOLESTEROL IN THE ELDERLY
Two studies which considered total blood cholesterol levels and mortality in the elderly, were published in the Lancet almost simultaneously in 1997. In the first, scientists working at the Leiden University Medical Centre found that "each 1 mmol/L increase in total cholesterol corresponded to a 15% decrease in mortality" (Weverling-Rijnsburger et al 1997; Lancet :350)
An important study by Dr Harlan Krumholz of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University, revealed that persons older than 70, with low cholesterol levels, died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with a high cholesterol. (JAMA 1994;272)
A study published in 2003 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, studying the total cholesterol levels of 3,295 participants age 65-84 years over a 4 year period, concluded that those with total cholesterol levels below 5 mmol/L,had a higher risk of dying, even when many related factors were taken into account
LOW CHOLESTEROL AND HEART FAILURE
Recent (2006) research from the University of Hull in England has linked low cholesterol with higher death rates in people with heart failure. A study of 10,701 patients with suspected heart failure found that those with low cholesterol were 1.7 times more likely to die within 12 weeks of being hospitalized. The study was based on the Euro Heart Failure survey, which involved 115 hospitals in 24 European countries. Researchers from Germany also found that the strongest predictor for death in patients with heart failure, was the concentration of cytokines (hormones secreted from white blood cells responding to an inflammatory process in the body). In addition the mortality rate was higher in those patients who had the lowest cholesterol, LDL and triglyceride blood levels. Patients with cholesterol levels above 5.6 mmol/L had half the mortality.
LOW CHOLESTEROL, AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR AND SUICIDE
Since 1992 several observers have noted increases in suicides among those undertaking cholesterol-lowering regimes. Decreases in blood cholesterol cause decreases in serotonin receptors and affect the balance of cerebral lipid metabolism, leading to increased micro-viscosity, which could have profound effects on brain function.: In institutions, aggressive people and those with antisocial personalities have been found to have lower than normal blood cholesterol levels. Mental patients with high blood cholesterol (7.55 mmol/L) were less regressed and withdrawn than those with lower (4.8 mmol/L) .(Engleberg 1992; Lancet 339)(Modai et al 1994 J, Clin, Psychiatry ; 55)
LOW CHOLESTEROL AND ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE
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