How LOW Cholesterol Can Harm Your Health

How LOW Cholesterol Can Harm Your Health







Sayer Ji, Contributor
Activist Post

You've heard for decades about the dangers of high cholesterol, but did
you know that LOW cholesterol can lead to violence towards self and
others, and has been linked to premature aging, death and other adverse
health effects?

In a world gone mad with anti-cholesterol anxiety, and where gobbling
down pharmaceuticals designed to poison the body into no longer
synthesizing it is somehow considered sane behavior, it is refreshing to
look at some of the research on the health benefits of cholesterol, or conversely, the dangers of low cholesterol.

Benefits of Cholesterol...

• Cholesterol Is Needed To Prevent Aggression: It
  has been known for almost 30 years that low serum cholesterol levels
  are associated with habitually violent tendencies of homicidal offenders
  under the influence of alcohol.[i] Since then, there are at least 8 other studies that have either confirmed or explored the cholesterol-violence link,
  including both violence towards self and other. One of the possible
  explanations for this association was discussed in an article published
  in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 1993: "One of the functions of
  serotonin in the central nervous system is the suppression of harmful
  behaviour impulses...Low membrane cholesterol decreases the number of
  serotonin receptors. Since membrane cholesterol exchanges freely with
  cholesterol in the surrounding medium, a lowered serum cholesterol
  concentration may contribute to a decrease in brain serotonin, with
  poorer suppression of aggressive behaviour".[ii] Not surprisingly, several reports have now surfaced on cholesterol-lowering statin drugs contributing to irritability and/or aggression.
  
• Cholesterol Is Needed To Fight Cancer: The
  inverse relationship between cholesterol levels and the risk for a
  variety of cancers, and mortality associated with cancer, has been known
  about since the late 80's.[iii] Since then, the cholesterol-cancer connection
  has been confirmed over and over again. It is to be expected,
  therefore, that statin drug use would be linked with increased cancer
  incidence, which indeed it is.[iv]
  Even when you take so-called "bad" LDL-cholesterol and administer it to
  a culture of highly malignant, multi-drug resistant leukemia cells, the
  cells lose their resistance to chemotherapy. Not exactly what can be
  characterized as a "bad" substance, now is it? [v]
  
• Cholesterol Is Needed To Prevent Hemorrhagic Stroke: There
  are two types of stroke: 1) Ischemic, associated with lack of blood flow
  and oxygen to the brain 2) Hemorrhagic, associated with the rupture of a
  blood vessel in the brain, and bleeding. The risk for the former, in
  theory, could be raised in the presence of excessive oxidized
  cholesterol. However, it is the risk for the second, hemorrhagic stroke,
  which is increased when cholesterol levels are low. Noted as far back
  as 1994 in the British Medical Journal, in an article titled, "Assessing
  possible hazards of reducing serum cholesterol," researchers found "The
  only cause of death attributable to low serum cholesterol concentration
  was haemorrhagic stroke."[vi] Other studies can be viewed that confirm this association on our stroke-cholesterol link page.
  
• Cholesterol Is Needed for Memory: Low HDL cholesterol has been identified as a risk factor for deficit and decline in memory in midlife.[vii]
  Even in Parkinson's disease, higher total serum cholesterol
  concentrations are associated with slower clinical progression of the
  disease.[viii]Statin
  drugs, which inhibit the production of cholesterol, hence severely
  affecting the brain, are now required by the FDA to display the black
  box warning that they may adversely affect the memory.[ix] We have indexed over 50 studies from the National Library of Medicine's bibliographic database, Medline, on the neurotoxicity of statin drugs, with six of these specifically addressing statin-induced memory impairment.
  
• Cholesterol is Needed for Longevity: In a fascinating study
  published in PLoS in 2011, telomere length – the shoestring cap-like
  ends of the chromosomes which prevent DNA damage associated with
  cellular aging – was linked to higher LDL and total cholesterol levels.
  The longer the length of these protective caps, the higher the
  cholesterol.[x] Indeed, several studies indicate that lower cholesterol is associated with increased mortality.
  
• Cholesterol Helps Us Fight Infection: It has been observed
  that a cholesterol-rich diet improves patients with tuberculosis,
  leading researchers to suggest "cholesterol should be used as a
  complementary measure in antitubercular treatment."[xi] Cholesterol-lowering drugs, incidentally, exhibit immunosuppressive and potent immunotoxic properties, likely in part due to their cholesterol depleting effects.
  

Given that cholesterol is essential for all animal life and that each
cell is capable of synthesizing it from simpler molecules, we should not
be surprised by examples provided above of cholesterol's significant
health benefits. Nor should it be surprising that cholesterol-lowering drugs have over 300 adverse health effects. For
now, suffice it to say, that conventional medical practice would do
well to receive instruction from basic principles of biology, rather
than simply the drug-company marketing copy it increasingly falls prey
to.


Source:-
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/09/how-low-cholesterol-can-harm-your-health.html