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Low serum cholesterol has been linked in numerous scientific papers to suicide, accidents, and violence (
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7)... there are a bunch more, but I'm a bit weary of linking! This is why I write a blog, and not a peer-reviewed journal. Anyway, no one knows to this day whether depression, violence, and suicidal risk have a metabolic byproduct of low cholesterol, or whether having low cholesterol will predispose you to suicide out of hand (here's a rather snarky editorial pointing out that fact (
8)). Some trials of statins (with the resultant crackerjack drop in cholesterol) will show no effect on suicide (
9). A statin skeptic's favorite study, the J-LIT trial, showed deaths by accidents/suicides increased threefold in the group with total cholesterol less than 160 (yes, the p was .09, but that means there is only a 91% chance that finding didn't happen by random happenstance (
10)).
Now, why could serum cholesterol have anything to do with the brain and depression? Good question - and the first question to ask in any theory of the brain is do the peripheral levels of something have anything at all to do with the central nervous system amounts of the same thing - so do serum cholesterol levels match up to relative amounts of cholesterol in the brain? They do (
11).
And cholesterol is important in the brain. Synapses, where brain function goes live, have to have cholesterol to form. Brain signaling is all about membranes, and cell membranes are constructed from fat. Cholesterol and the omega 3 and 6 fatty acids are the most important molecules in the synapse. If your brain fat is significantly different from so-called "normal" fat (which I'll go back to the hunter gatherer paradigm and say an HG's brain is going to have the approximate fat constituents for which we are evolved), the signaling in your brain could be very different too (
12). Scientific papers will call this "alterations of membrane fluidity." (
13).
Comment: For more information about the The Over-Prescribing of Psychoactive Drugs to Children: A Scourge of Our Times, read the following articles:
American Kids are the Most Medicated in the World
Little Pharma: The Medication of U.S. Children
Poor Children More Likely To Be Put On Antipsychotic Drugs
Government is daring to keep kids on drugs
More Children on Drugs Than Ever: Chronic Prescriptions Increase Dramatically
Two-Year-Old Toddlers Being Dosed Up with Antipsychotic Drugs