Despite the fact that most people are worried about having cholesterol levels that are too high, yet another study has found that low cholesterol is actually associated with adverse behavioral effects such as aggression and depression.

While the medical establishment continues to push the suppression of cholesterol levels to abnormally low levels, it is not widely known that there is a significant amount of evidence linking low cholesterol to aggressive behavior and depression.

According to researchers from Yale University School of Medicine, "The well-documented negative association between serum cholesterol and aggressive behavior has led Kaplan (Psychosom Med 1994 Nov-Dec;56:479-84) to propose a cholesterol-serotonin hypothesis of aggression.

According to this hypothesis, low dietary cholesterol intake leads to depressed central serotonergic activity, which itself has been reported in numerous studies of violent individuals."

• Researchers studied 25 violent psychiatric patients

• For 7 days, the patients wore signaling devices that emitted an average of seven signals a day.

• Following each signal, patients filled out a mood questionnaire.

The authors found that "Total serum cholesterol (TSC) concentration was positively associated with measures of affect, cognitive efficiency, activation, and sociability, suggesting a link between low TSC and dysphoria."

"These findings are consistent with the cholesterol-serotonin hypothesis and with the substantive literature linking both aggression and depression to depressed central serotonergic activity," they conclude.

Journal of Behavioral Medicine, December 1, 2000; 23: 519-529