Can Cholesterol Be Too Low?

It was all making sense -- lower your cholesterol as far as you can and reduce your risk for heart attacks and strokes. As with so many things in the health field, it is more complicated.

A Cholesterol and Cancer Link

It turns out that having too low a cholesterol level is linked to an increased chance of getting stomach cancer. A study examined 2,604 Japanese subjects (at least 40 years older) and followed them for 14 years. They grouped the subjects into four groups (based on cholesterol level): less than 157; between 157 to 207; between 207 to 234; and more than 234. After 14 years, 97 of the 2,604 developed stomach cancer.

One thing to note is that the Japanese have one of the world's highest rates of stomach cancer (perhaps because of their diet which protects from cardiovascular disease). Taken altogether, the Japanese have one of the world's best life expectancies, especially the Okinawans, one of the world's longest-lived people.

How Much Does Low Cholesterol Increase Stomach Cancer Risk?

The researchers reported the change in risk as the number of cases per 1,000 person-years. This is a bit of a weird number -- think of it this way: in a group of 1,000 people with the lowest cholesterol level, 3.9 people would get stomach cancer each year (compared to 2.1 in a group of 1,000 people with the highest cholesterol level).

What Does It Mean?

So what to do? You should still focus on your cholesterol. There are a lot more heart attacks every year than cases of stomach cancer. In 2008, the National Cancer Institute estimates that 10,880 people will die from stomach cancer while almost 700,000 will die of heart disease (and 150,000 more from stroke). So don't take this study as a reason to not bring your cholesterol down. But if you succeed in having a very low cholesterol, you might want to talk to your doctor about getting more frequent screenings for stomach cancer.

Learn More About Lowering Your Cholesterol

_Sources:

Kouichi Asano 1 2 *, Michiaki Kubo 1, Koji Yonemoto 1, Yasufumi Doi 2, Toshiharu Ninomiya 2, Yumihiro Tanizaki 2, Hisatomi Arima 1, Tomoko Shirota 3, Takayuki Matsumoto 2, Mitsuo Iida 2, Yutaka Kiyohara. Impact of serum total cholesterol on the incidence of gastric cancer in a population-based prospective study: The Hisayama study. Volume 122, Issue 4 , Pages 909 - 914.

National Cancer Institute. Stomach Cancer Home Page.

National Center for Health Statistics. FASTATS.