Low cholesterol and cancer
Countries with diets high in saturated fats tend to suffer from high levels of colon cancer as well. It would therefore appear to be common sense that individuals with high levels of cholesterol in their blood would be more at risk of cancers, but it is not so. A 1974 review of data from the Framingham Study and Key’s Seven Countries Study showed that people with cancer tended to have lower than average levels.

A 1990 study [1] compared the cholesterol rates over ten years of people who developed colon cancer with a control group of people who did not. The cancer group’s rates had fallen an average 13% over the period whilst the control group’s had risen an average 2%. They established beyond doubt that the fall in cholesterol preceded the development of the cancer, rather than the cancer causing the fall. Worryingly, the average blood cholesterol level of those who developed the cancers had declined to an average 5.56 millimoles per litre (mmol/l) yet the UK Government’s Health of the Nation strategy still aims to reduce everyone’s levels to below 5.2 mmol/l.

Low cholesterol and stroke
Over the past few decades the Japanese have begun to eat more total fat, saturated fatty acids, cholesterol, animal fats and protein, and less rice and vegetables. Investigators were surprised to find that this change to Western and urban eating patterns had been accompanied by a general lowering of blood pressure and a large decline in the incidence of deaths from strokes and cerebral haemorrhage during the period from 1960 to 1989. They attributed these reductions to an increase in blood cholesterol levels over the period. [2] Supporting their findings, but the other way round, a follow-up study of the 350,000 US men screened for the MRFIT study found that middle-aged men ran a sixfold risk of death from cerebral haemorrhage if they had low blood cholesterol levels. [3]

In December 1997, the Framingham researchers stated that, in their view, “blood serum cholesterol levels were not related to incidence of stroke” and showed that for every 3% more food energy derived from fat there could be 15% fewer strokes and significant decreases in all types of heart disease. Another study [4] concluded that each 1mmol/l increase in total blood cholesterol led to a 15% reduction in child deaths. Yet another study, this time of men over 80 years old, found that those with blood cholesterol levels over 6.5mmol/l had been half as likely to die during the period of the study compared to those whose blood cholesterol level was around the 5.2mmol/l mark we are told is healthy. [5]

Low cholesterol and Alzheimer’s disease
Approximately half of the brain is made up of fats. Writing on ways of reducing the symptoms of Alzheimer’s in 1991, Dr Frank Corrigan and colleagues called for “strategies for increasing the delivery of cholesterol to the brain” and recommend increasing fat intake. [6]

Low cholesterol and premature death
Correlations between saturated fat intake and blood cholesterol levels are solid. Although the next step, raised blood cholesterol leading to increased risk of heart disease, has not been proven, this saturated fat-cholesterol link has been used extensively to justify dietary advice. A second solid correlation has received less publicity: that between low blood cholesterol levels in young children and premature death:

Country ------------------Blood Cholesterol ------ Under age 5 Mortality
---------------------------- (millimoles per litre) ---------- (per 1,000)

Finland --------------------------- 4.9 ------------------------------- 7
Netherlands -------------------- 4.5 ------------------------------- 9
USA ------------------------------- 4.3 ------------------------------12
Italy -------------------------------- 4.1 ------------------------------12
Philippines ---------------------- 3.8 ----------------------------- 72
Ghana ---------------------------- 3.3 -----------------------------145

Table: Child mortality under age 5 per 1,000. 1992 Britannia Book of the Year. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago.

Low cholesterol and brain function
Decreases in blood cholesterol levels cause decreases in serotonin receptors in the brain, disrupting brain function. Psychiatric patients with low blood cholesterol levels were more prone to depression and suicide. [7]

BUY THE GREEN HEALTH WATCH BRIEFING ON STATINS, CHOLESTEROL AND HOMOCYSTEINE