HEALTHY DIETS AND SCIENCE: High cholesterol levels are associated with higher intelligence

The raison d'etre of this website is to provide you with hard scientific information which may help you make informed decisions in your quest for health (so far I have blogged concise summaries of over 1,500 scientific studies and have had three books published).

My research is mainly focused on the effects of cholesterol, saturated fat and statin drugs on health. If you know anyone who is worried about their cholesterol levels and heart disease, or has been told to take statin drugs you could send them a link to this website, and to my statin or cholesterol or heart disease books.

David Evans

Independent Health Researcher

Monday, 19 April 2010

High cholesterol levels are associated with higher intelligence

This post includes a summary of a paper published in Psychosomatic Medicine 67:24-30 2005

Study title and authors:
Serum Cholesterol and Cognitive Performance in the Framingham Heart Study

Penelope K. Elias, PhD, Merrill F. Elias, PhD, Ralph B. D’Agostino, PhD, Lisa M. Sullivan, PhD and Philip A. Wolf, MD
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts

This paper can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15673620

Cognitive performance is a measurement of learning, memory, attention/concentration, abstract reasoning, concept formation, and organizational abilities.

The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between cholesterol levels and cognitive performance. Cognitive tests were administered to 789 men and 1105 women who were free of dementia and stroke and were then followed over a 16- to 18-year period.

The study found those with the highest cholesterol levels scored 80% higher in the cognitive tests compared to those with the lowest cholesterol levels.

The results of the study show that higher cholesterol levels are associated with higher intelligence.