Showing posts with label Cholesterol and Other Fats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cholesterol and Other Fats. Show all posts
November 4, 2012
Cholesterol helps your body develop
Cholesterol begins to influence your body even before you’re born. According to a 1996 report in the journal Science, cholesterol enhances an embryo’s healthy development by triggering the activity of the specific genes that instruct embryonic cells to become specialized body structures — arms, legs, spine, and so on. Sadly, as Science reported, approximately one in every 9,000 babies is born with a birth defect linked to the fetus’s failure to make the cholesterol it needs.
In 2003, researchers at the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute linked a pregnant woman’s cholesterol deficiency to a defect in the fetal brain called HPE (the failure of the brain to divide normally into two halves). Ninetynine percent of embryos with HPE are spontaneously aborted; those born live experience severe mental retardation, are unable to walk or talk, and usually die within the first year of life.
To prevent these problems, pregnant women are often advised not to take cholesterol-lowering drugs.
