Cholesterol is a frequent topic of conversation here. We know that untreated / under treated hypothyroidism can be a cause of high cholesterol.
We also know that symptoms of untreated / under treated hypothyroidism can be brain fog, depression, vision problems and memory issues. Some of these can also be caused by other hormonal imbalances, such as menopause.
So is this a surprise revelation?
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'Compelling' New Evidence
Nearly half of dementia cases worldwide could theoretically be prevented or delayed by eliminating 14 modifiable risk factors during an individual's lifetime, a report from the Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention, and care.
The report adds two new modifiable risk factors for dementia — high cholesterol and vision loss — to the 12 risk factors identified in the 2020 Lancet Commission report, which were linked to about 40% of all dementia cases.
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The 12 risk factors cited in the 2020 report are lower levels of education, hearing loss, hypertension, smoking, obesity, depression, physical inactivity, diabetes, excessive alcohol consumption, traumatic brain injury (TBI), air pollution, and social isolation.
According to the authors of the current report, there is "new compelling evidence" that untreated vision loss and elevated low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol are also risk factors for dementia.
These two added risk factors are associated with 9% of all dementia cases — with an estimated 7% of cases due to high LDL cholesterol from about age 40 years, and 2% of cases due to untreated vision loss in later life, the authors said.
Out of all 14 risk factors, those tied to the greatest proportion of dementia in the global population are hearing impairment and high LDL cholesterol (7% each), along with less education in early life, and social isolation in later life (5% each), the report estimates.
Registration is required but can be done without cost.
I'll quote one paragraph:
Further evidence of causality comes from a mendelian randomisation meta-analysis that included 27 studies, including 3136 people with dementia and 3103 healthy controls, which reported that high total cholesterol and low HDL cholesterol were risk factors for dementia.165 By contrast, an individual participant meta-analysis of more than 21 000 people (mean baseline age 76 years) identified no association between total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, or HDL cholesterol and cognitive decline. This result did not change when the analysis was stratified by statin use or APOE ε4 status.166
And I'll offer one observation about the entire paper: The word "thyroid" does not occur one single time (not a single word containing "thyro", nor TSH). Considering the known effects of low thyroid hormone on cholesterol levels, this might appear somewhat surprising. But they don't even look to consider whether low thyroid hormone just might contribute to higher levels of cholesterol. Not even to justify EXCLUDING thyroid from the rest of the paper. As in explaining that they'd thought of it but dismissed it (whether on good or bad grounds).
helvella 'The word "thyroid" does not occur one single time... Considering the known effects of low thyroid hormone on cholesterol levels, this might appear somewhat surprising.'
Exactly what I was implying at the beginning of my post.
And hasn't there been strong suggestion, even insistence, that 'older' people should have their levothyroxine dose reduced, because we don't need as much as we get older?
Yes - less thyroid hormone as we age. Yet our tired out and ancient pituitaries seem to recognise the issue and increase their TSH output. Seemingly to try to encourage our own thyroids (so far as we have them) to provide more thyroid hormone. Whereas almost every other part of us reduces functionality and output.
I think this is an extraordinary observation which invites the most stringent investigation and detailed explanation.
Instead of which we simply get told it is "normal" to see higher TSH in older people and we should reduce doses if we take exogenous thyroid hormone.
Sometimes I just feel like giving up hope. It is known that being under active or having a higher TSH can go hand in hand with high cholesterol and yet the best doctors can do is offer statins! Why not fix the thyroid and if the patients cholesterol is still high then consider statins?
Don’t even mention offering patients antidepressants instead of treating the thyroid. I just can’t understand why doctors do that.
Worryingly all the old patient skills that doctors had years ago where they would talk to their patients and ask them how they were feeling etc appear to have gone out of the window.
It really is depressing and I despair and because so much of this is ‘coming from the top’ I really can’t see things ever getting any better because new, young doctors are being indoctrinated by doctors who treat the patient like the enemy and who believe in things like somataform disorder and think that people who have an under active thyroid just want more thyroxine to slim down etc.
I told my third GP in UK that I was tired a lot at my first appointment with him and he immediately asked if I wanted an anti-depressant. I just looked at him and said I was tired, not depressed and no, I didn't want any. Nobody listens anymore. (And he was better than the first couple of doctors I saw!) Lord help us all!
I was running down that path before I got to the end of the title of the post! The brain really struggles with low cholesterol, if someone is given too aggressive a statin for example.
I don't scare easily and I can think for myself so I don't take much notice at all of all these bright new ideas they come up with to scare us. I will be eating salt, butter, full cream milk, red meat and some sugar (although I'd really like to eat a lot less of that) for the whole of my life. They can do one with their scares. If they can't be bothered to work out how to fix massive hormonal issues for people I'm not swallowing their experimental drugs and ideas.
A case in point right now is that I am suffering swollen feet and lower legs. It's debilitating because sleeping is hard with the stinging pain. I went to the GP for them to check me out. Instant water tablet. I knew they would. I thought I'd try it. It was great for about a week and a half. I was forever on the loo and I could really seem to grip hold of my bladder and squeeze it empty. My feet and legs went down and were less painful.
Now? It's all back, swelling, pain and heaviness. Can't grip my bladder and squeeze it properly. Why? Because I'm sure it's hormonal and only getting the hormonal balance right will sort it out. I have experimented with my HRT (no change, just felt depressed) and so if it's not heart related (no one will think to check that despite me being in permanent AF) then it has to be hormonal. And I'm going to have to find out and fix it for myself I suppose. I sometimes wonder what happened to doctors. They used to be known for helping people.
Not in my life-time they haven't! And I'm nearly 80. No doctor has ever really helped me. In fact, I've never seen a doctor that hasn't made me worse, rather than better. I read somewhere - think it was on here, newspaper article - that they make up their mind what's wrong with you the minute you walk through the door. And, right or wrong, they stick with it. So, if you're female, you don't stand much chance!
Anyway, I often have that problem with my legs and feet. Just getting over a bout right now. And there's nothing wrong with my heart so it has to be hormonal. But I can't work out why, because I haven't changed my dose for a long time. Didn't even feel the need to slightly reduce it this summer, like I did last year. So, I really don't know what's caused it, but it seems to be going away by itself - in the lower legs that is. My feet are still enormous and I can't see them reducing any time soon. (Just cleared out my shoe cupboard and now I'm crying. All my beautiful shoes that I'll never be able to wear again.) Oh, well. Such is life.
I'm like you, I eat what I like and too hell with the medical profession. They know nothing about it. And I'm sick of going to the doctors, being told I need to lose weight (like I'm too stupid to know!) and to cut out all traces of fat from my diet! Do they have any idea how dangerous that is? Do they know you need salt to live? High blood pressure? Cut out salt! It's rediculous. And, I wish eating butter and cream did make your cholesterol rise because I have naturally low cholesterol and nothing makes it rise! And what do they tell me? 'Cholesterol can never be too low'! Bunch of clowns. And the thought never leaves my head, whenever I enter a doctor's surgery I ache to say: hello doctor, how many people have you killed today?
I'm the third one on this thread with swollen ankles/feet and lower legs. I have just put it down to lower back pain from slipped vertebrae, but maybe not! Love your thoughts on what you might say to your Doctor.
Thank you. I do wonder how they would react. But I haven't seen one since 2014. And not likely to see one in the near future because there aren't any in our neck of the woods!
Yes, pretty certain the swollen legs and feet is down to hypo. But no idea what the solution is.
I dare you! Of course, what they do, or don't do more to the point, is not going to kill many on the actual same day. Mostly what they get wrong leads to a slow degradation and eventual death.
I too have been looking at my favourite shoes and boots and wondering what to do with them. All I have worn all summer is flip-flops. I have size 8 feet before this started so it's very hard now. Things just don't fit and they don't make them much bigger. I can't ware my Wellie boots either, which is really inconvenient. I need to go into undergrowth this afternoon to pull weeds but it's full of nettles and I have nothing to protect my legs.
I had hoped switching to Armour would help resolve my fluid filled legs and feet. But it's not done anything for it and I can't get a dose that makes me feel any more well or energetic. So annoying. I shan't keep on with this water tablet for long if it does nothing. No one at the surgery will ever review it or remove it so that will be up to me. My dad, in his 80's had a large ice cream box full of tablets he took daily. A truly terrifying amount. And he just got sicker and more dulled with taking them.
Exactly, so you can rarely pin the blame on the doctor, and they literally get away with murder.
I had size 8 feet for years, and it was hard enough getting shoes to fit then. But then they started to grow... Except for one very hot summer with they actually shrank! Then got bigger again. When I lived in Paris I used to go to a shop that specialised in Drag Queens. It was wonderful! Huge sizes and the most glorious, glamorous shoes! Sadly, I no longer live in Paris and buy my shoes on a site that caters for diabetics. But, at least they fit. I now take a 45, in French sizes, don't know what that is in UK. Probably something like a 10! But at least they're comfortable and I can walk. At one point I was wearing sandals all year round, and putting plastic legging things over the top in the winter! Boy, did they make my feet sweat! 😂 Horrible.
I've never been able to wear wellies - and I've always longed to. Something about my ankle/heel won't bend enough to get them on. I remember trying a pair on in a sports shop once and they got stuck! Most embarrassing! And I've always wanted a pair of green wellies.
It's amazing how many pills some elderly people take! I'm sure half of them aren't necessary. And probably half of them cancel the other half out! These poor people line up in the pharmacy, trusting their doctors implicitly, with a shopping list of medications, and stagger out with several plastic bags full. It's outrageous. My sympathies to your father. I swore I would never be one of them. I just take my T3 and my supplements - and that's bad enough! The whole situation is out of hand.
You are doing very well without pharmaceuticals. There are no flies on you!
I have to take a beta blocker because I inherited atrial fibrillation from dad. I also take an anti-inflammatory for the same reason. I have a fast heart rate. I take the first size dose. I could do with a higher dose to bring it down further but I don't want the side-effects. I asked a "new" cardiologist if I could try calcium channel blockers the last time I saw one before he signed me off his clinic. But he told me BB and CCB were all the same!! NO! They are not. I just left him to it. I haven't been reviewed about the AF since lockdown. Probably safest way. But I do need to check that the heart is structurally OK to rule out that being the cause of the foot swelling.
I love the idea of a drag queen shoe shop for those of us with big feet. All the bling. Trouble is they like heels and my feet no longer do. I miss my Wellies. I live in the countryside. I need them. I have a lovely pair of red ones and a pair made with neoprene legs. So warm and comfy. But neither will fit my swollen feet, ankles or shins. The swelling just happened all of a sudden in June 2022. I have no idea why. I had just changed my Armour dose and when it was unsuccessful to helping me feel better I reduced it back hoping to undo the swelling. Nope!
At least with wellies there are no restrictions in sizes. They have huge ones! So perhaps the solution is just buying a larger pair?
Yes, there were some very high heels in that shop. But I could deal with that in those days - I was only 50 years old! And the did have some almost flats, so I bought a lot of them. What I loved most was the outrageous colours! lol I've always loved colourful shoes.
And me! My favourites were bright red with black heels. I used to do a lot of theatre and once appeared in Calendar Girls. I was photographed in my red shoes with just a stratigic sunflower and a carefully placed arm. There was almost nothing left to the imagination. It actually wasn't that long ago either. When I look at the wreckage of hypothyroidism on my body I could easily cry. No one will buy a calendar of me almost nude anymore.
There are some wellies that have opening sides, backs, straps for tightening, etc.
I once had a pair of motorcycle boots with zips down the back. I have extremely high insteps so these were fantastic. I'd buy some right now if I could find the same again. But I do have some understanding of how difficult boots can be to get on and off.
Also, some of the neoprene boots have most of the wellie advantages but, being soft, are very much easier to put on/take off.
I've been grateful to doctors during emergencies, like appendicitis or when I went into unexpected anaphylaxis. But I've always maintained the NHS is absolutely rubbish for long term chronic conditions, especially invisible conditions. I've had precious little help with those and I plan to stay away from the healthcare system for as long as possible.
Oh me too! But it's not just the NHS, it's just as bad here in France.
Yes, they're ok for sewing you up if you get ripped at the seem. And the care I got after a hysterectomy was brilliant (that was in France). And my one except to everything I say about doctors was the surgeon who took out my gallbladder. A wonderful, brilliant man. An old-fashioned gentleman. But the rest...
My thought too! I was just reading an email sent from Food for the Brain Foundation about this,but will read in more depth tomorrow.
Seems raised Homocysteine levels and low omega 3 levels were proved in studies to be signicant in dementia/alhzeimers development but this has been overlooked by the Lancet again and cholesterol and cataracts mentioned instead!Still, heaven forbid something like changing diets and ensuring b vitamins sufficient could help!
Looking forward to reading more detail tomorrow...
There’s nothing quite like covering all the bases, is there? That list of 12 includes just about everything that could be covered under the “you’ve never been this age before…” heading!
Sounds to me like this is just another ploy to get everyone to take their useless and, quite frankly, dangerous statins (my husband got T2 diabetes and serious muscle problems from his years on Simvastatin which all went as soon as he stopped taking them)!
I believe that the medical profession, in collusion with the pharmaceutical industry, are playing Russian roulette with patients’ lives and we end up paying the price for their stupid little games!
I am intrigued by the 'untreated' vision loss. My mind is bewildered - is this suggesting that if you give someone a pair of glasses to treat the vision loss they won't develop dementia??? Or if you remove cataracts likewise, no dementia??? (I know it doesn't say no dementia, just being brief). That sounds to me as if dementia develops as a result of lack of people around who care, no-one encouraging the person to get their eyes tested, lack of love and stimulation.
The vision loss is listed as a contributory, not a sole cause. For example, not getting cataracts done, or maybe not getting treatment for Age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Bear in mind that access to treatment for vision problems can cost money that not everyone can afford.
But my own experience has been that untreated thyroid can cause significant vision loss, which, in my case, resolved with appropriate thyroid treatment. Prior to diagnosis of hypothyroidism I was prescribed glasses for both distance and near vision. Once on appropriate thyroid meds, I didn't need any glasses at all for several years.
I also blame undertreated hypothyroidism for hearing loss, which is also on the list of contributors to dementia. Only for me it never got better with appropriate thyroid treatment.
Oh no! With treatment it got worse?! I mean, mine is not exactly getting better, but with hypo the tinnitus was so loud that I could hear nothing but. So at least that has calmed down for most of the time. There is a whole other story to this, not be told here and now. I'm sorry your hearing loss got a lot worse. 😔
It's been getting worse most of my adult life, not just since I started treatment. It just didn't improve with treatment. And I've had tinnitus since I was about 35, which comes and goes.
Going off on a tangent, mum had her second cataract removed on Friday. We had her first done a year ago. She can't lift her arms so I had to do the drops. 4 times a day for 4 weeks was a huge responsibility when trying to work and do everything else. So I was really reluctant to do it again, especially as the optician said that because of some macular degeneration cataract removal would probably not improve her prescription much but should let more light in. So I said it wasn't worth it (guilt tripping now). First op was in a hospital. Took hours, involved so many eye drops that mum thought she'd be washed away. She was given an injection in the eye to numb it (she said that wasn't nice). The bed was hard and because she can't lie flat due to curved spine it was difficult. It was also dark and a bit scary. Afterwards her vision was blurred/fuzzy for several weeks.
I took her for her annual eye test a couple of weeks ago and the optician said he thought she should have it done. So I relented. He said he'd refer her to the hospital but I asked if she could go to the CHEC clinic in Coventry and he said yes, of course. They are a private clinic with NHS staff clearing the NHS backlog I think. No payment anyway. We could have had the surgery 2 days after the eye test if I had been free. As it was she had to wait almost a week. It was done on Friday. Much faster in a nice little clinic on a business park. Lovely staff, lots of them. Very few drops. Numbing was with a tiny pellet dropped in the lower lid. The bed was a sort of fancy dentists chair. Very configurable to mums needs. She was comfy. They noticed she would struggle to get her lets up so they lifted the for her (hospital left her to struggle to get up onto the couch). The surgery was done in the light, with someone explaining what they were doing all the time. They irrigate the eye with water. It was done in 50 minutes. She had a light headache over the eye the morning after (as did my husband). 2 days later she's reading her novel and has been doing her embroidery. Absolutely brilliant service. Loads of free parking too! Much better surgical experience. The NHS is really struggling.
Interesting...and as well vision issues can also be caused by b12 deficiency, and insufficient b12 and b vits can allow homocysteine to build up. And homocysteine it seems has been attributed to dementia/etc. So if they start listening to those doing the research to explore this they would be going back further than stopping at cataracts and looking for roots of the problems!
I had a conversation with a doctor once about my late mum, mum was never officially diagnosed with dementia but there's no doubt she had cognitive impairment, she was also extremely paranoid and displayed very strange behaviour.
My mum was sight impaired due to macular degeneration and extremely deaf, and the doctor I spoke to, a consultant psychiatrist, said sensory deprivation can definitely contribute to dementia. Its to do with input into the brain and stimulating various parts of the brain to not degenerate.
Unfortunately mum's macular degneration wasnt the type that responded to injections, we asked several times. And she refused to wear her hearing aids. It certainly wasnt a lack of love or care.
i once looked after a 90 yr old lady with macular degeneration. we'd be in a the middle of a perfectly logical conversation, and she'd ask me about the furry animal at my side and whether we should give it something to eat. Her doctor told us that the brain struggles to deal with the lack of information from the eyes , so it makes things up to fill the gap ...
My mum bless her said and believed some very odd things in her later years, usually that the care staff were waiting under her bed to murder her. I loved her dearly but she was a very difficult " patient". I once joked to my son that if the staff did murder her I could see their point 🙂
It’s called Charles Bonet Syndrome’s. Only people who’ve lost a lot of sight suffer this. Me, my brother and sister get injections for wet AMD and all have good vision with the treatment.
I am so sorry, I didn't mean to imply at all that anyone suffering from eg sight loss was not receiving loving care. I only meant that when dementia is also present perhaps lack of care is a contributory cause, not because family don't care, but perhaps there is no family nearby. I have an elderly, struggling brother in Spain and my own children in England. Although I spend a few weeks with my brother in Spain each year he needs far more and suffers greatly from a lack of stimulating company now his lovely wife barely speaks at all (following covid). So I am really sorry if my comment made you or anyone else feel I was criticising, I know we sometimes can't do enough for all our loved ones and I have looked after people who were very loved and surrounded by many loving family members develop dementia.
No offence taken, I looked after mum for 8 years before she deteriorated to the point that even with carers 4 times a day, and the daily care from family that she couldnt manage.
She actually asked to go into a home, I was against the idea, but in the end she needed 24 hour care. She had a lot of complex issues and as I didnt live nearby and dont drive, it just wasnt sustainable.
At a push loss of uncorrected vision might cause the patient to just sit and stare at a wall, not do anything. Not read, or craft or even watch TV and that lack of brain exercise might cause depression or begin a dementia. Same with the hearing loss one, cut out the stimulation of the real world and part of the brain gives up and withers.
My mum was in a home for the last three years of her life and found mixing with others extremely challenging, due to being both blind and deaf, so she isolated herself. The home tried very hard to get her to engage with others but to no avail. Social isolation is also a dementia risk.
Yes, a big one I would think. I'm a sociable introvert so I'm much more able to enjoy myself on my own. Mum needs more interaction but living in my garden she sees me every day and uses FaceTime with one friend and a phone call to a couple of others. Trouble is most of her friends have gone now, and what's left are nowhere near as tech savvy as we've forced mum to be. I make the effort to take her to things and invite a few people over for lunch now and then. It's just all a lot of work for me. But it means at close to 90 she's doing pretty well, so it's worth it.
I've found it harder than I expected. But it was the right thing to do. She lived in a rapidly deteriorating house which needed everything doing to bring it up to spec. She was on a main road and all the neighbours bar one had died or moved away from her younger years (the butcher over the road though was marvellous) and her postman who changed light bulbs and read meters for her during lockdown. We had a derelict stone barn in the garden. We extended it and transformed it into a lovely home for her. The main barn area is her sitting room and kitchen area and she has a nice bedroom and shower room. It's really pretty and warm and light and bright. She loves it. I've basically been on the go with it all since February 2022 when we had to empty the barn of my workshop and 20 years of accumulation! And I was T3 only then and on my knees.
It would all be so much easier if my thyroid meds actually made me better in some way. Energy or something! But I soldier on. This year I've worked really hard on the garden, rebuilding that, so that she has a lovely aspect beyond her patio. I could take her out more if I had more energy.
Sounds like you're doing a wonderful job even with the hypo! I don't know how you do it. I couldn't. And I consider myself relatively well on my T3 only regime. Cleaning out the shoe cupboard has don't me in. There's a pill of washing-up in the sink waiting to be done and I just can find the motivation - well, the motivation is that my granddaughter will be down soon to cook my dinner! But I still can't find the energy - let alone the enthusiasm. You're doing great! If only all daughters took that much care of their mums.
I would have done it for my mum, it's true - not the same situation but when she fell ill, I was ready to give up everything in France and move to England to look after her. Yes, it does seem like the right thing to do. She would have hated it, of course, she was that sort of person. But in the end, she never left the hospital. She died four days after I got there. So, I came back to France. But I would have done anything to have kept her alive just that little bit longer. I think you're wonderful.
Thank you. I'm an only child so it's me or a home because her mobility isn't great and she'd hate a home and has no need to be in one for any other reason. She still cooks her meals and has ready meals from M&S and Ocado for some days to save the effort. She's hankering after a fruit cake so I think a new bag of mixed fruits will be arriving with her Ocado order on Wednesday and then I will help her make it as she doesn't have the strength to mix it up. Her arms are very weak.
She nursed dad for the last 18 months of his life and he wasn't easy. All those meds messed with his personality and he became first sharp tempered and even more opinionated and then quite nasty. Almost as soon as he died we went into lockdown. So once that was over we got on with the plans and made it happen. Things I don't enjoy are showering her and setting her hair on rollers. Those things are challenging. But have to be done.
Our builder said to me last week that he is so pleased (he popped in to see me and we ended up having tea and biscuits with mum) that she's had 2 summers here so far. He's done similar projects before and the elderly person has passed very quickly. In one instance before it was completed. Mum sat out in the sun this afternoon reading her book and quietly laughing at funny bits. She's happy as Larry. We have no children and husband is also an only child so we have no idea what will happen to us. Hope there's some good karma out there somewhere.
Sorting out cupboards is exhausting. It doesn't matter how big they are. It's the decision making that's tiring.
A different view of the publication. Thought that much had be written on the subject of cholesterol not being the big bad monster? foodforthebrain.org/the-lan...
Great website, thanks for posting the link! I've only had a quick browse around, and whilst there's lots about fat and diet etc, I didn't see any reference to hormones
Thanks for posting this article and all the other replies to it. Drs (so GPs) are taught to diagnose one condition at a time. I was lucky when my GP suspected that I was diabetic and asked for a battery of blood tests as they included TSH among them.
Hence I was diagnosed as both diabetic and hypothyroid at the same time. Sensibly the treatment for thyroid and diabetes were started a month apart with followup blood tests after 3 months to check on progress. Unsurprisingly they then wanted to tackle my cholesterol levels. I’m still unconvinced that the Statin did much and after moaning about side effects I managed to get off simvastatin and onto pravastatin and then (later) to get the dose halved.
I would recommend anyone on statins to investigate whether taking Coenzyme Q10 might work for them - statins work by reducing a common building block of both cholesterol and CO Q10, I believe that is HMG-CoA as statins are HMG-CoA inhibitors. CO Q10 may also reduce the muscle pains that statins allegedly cause (the reduction in CO Q10 in the body may be the cause if these muscle pains, hence the reason to supplement it).
My understanding is that while statins decrease the occurrence of “heart events”, they increase the risk of suffering heart failure (along with increasing the risk of diabetes, Alzheimers and Parkinson’s). As thyroid supplementation may also reduce cholesterol, it seems logical to me to try to get the thyroid levels within guidelines before going for statins - prescribing both (thyroid and statins) at the same time may mask which of the two is more effective.
We know that some chronic diseases seem to go hand in hand with each other. The trouble is is hard to design medical trials that can test for effects on more than one symptom (aka disease) at a time and if it were possible it would be a more expensive trial and Big Pharma isn’t interested unless there are potentially huge profits.
Maybe this is an area where AI could be used to look at multiple trials and results and suggestion conclusions without spending wads of money. That way we may well find the suspicions that contributors to this website all seem to have could be confirmed and could pave the way to better treatment for us all. Here’s hoping!!
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Never delay seeking advice or dialling emergency services because of something that you have read on HealthUnlocked.
That is how I read your introductory post!
Risk of dementia in elderly patients with the use of proton pump inhibitors
Dr Kendrick's - another new study - an interesting read
High cholesterol...
