Men With Depression Need To Avoid Low Cholesterol
Sometimes, these studies make me scratch my head. We know that high cholesterol can kill you, whether you have depression or not. Now, new research published in the Journal of Psychiatric Reasearchhas come out stating that in men diagnosed with drepression, low cholesterol can kill you, too.
According to this, the way the combination of low cholesterol and depression kills men is by making them commit suicide or taking a drug overdose or engaging in more risky behaviors that may lead to a premature death.
Damned if you pig out and damned if you don’t, huh?
What Is Low Cholesterol?
The article defined low cholesterol in men as “165 milligrams of cholesterol per deciliter or less”. The normal number is 200 milligrams of cholesterol per decileter.
When it comes to cholesterol, there is such a thing as getting the level too low. Low cholesterol is thought to perhaps play a role in making a person more predisposed to cancer. In pregnant women, it can lead to misscarriage or low birth weight.
For most people in North America or the UK, the dangers of getting low cholesterol are a moot point because of the high calorie, high-cholesterol diet. Because of the high price of food, people are choosing to get fatty calorie-laden food to help them get through the day. But, somehow, some folks still have low cholesterol.
Study Specs
The article was researched and written by the Geisinger Health System in Danville, PA. It looked at about 4500 veterans from Vietnam and followed up on what happened to them since 1985, with 2000 as a cut off date to begin coallating data. Veterans with both depression and low cholesterol were found to be seven times more likely to die a premature death than other veterans.
Of course, being a veteran may have had something to do with the high suicide rate, too, but for some reason, that point was glossed over.
February 13th, 2009 at 1:10 am
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