Remember good cholesterol? You know, HDL cholesterol, the kind that was associated with reduced risk of stroke? Forget it. Now comes a study from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute suggesting that people with genes that boost HDL levels  do not, in fact, have a lower risk of heart attacks. Strange. The Boston Globe reports that the scientists in looked at a gene variation that raises HDL levels, and should consequently give people a 13 percent decreased risk of heart attack. But when the researchers compared the genetically blessed with people who didn’t have the gene, there was zero difference in heart attack risk. Wait there’s more: another study, in which researchers examined a panel of 14 genetic variations that raised HDL levels, also found that inheriting those variations did nothing to reduce the risk of heart attack. Read an almost inscrutable summary of the study here.

If you’re not born stupid,  you’re not out of the woods. You can always become stupid, and researchers at UCLA are now suggesting that high-fructose sweeteners can help. PsychCentral reports that scientists at the school put high-fructose corn syrup, which is commonly added to processed foods from soft drinks to baby food, in the water of two groups of rats. One of the groups was also fed omega-3 fatty acids in the form of flaxseed oil and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). After six weeks, the high-fructose fed rats who did not get omega-3s navigated a maze much slower than the omega-3 rats, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity. The omega-3 deprived rats also developed signs of resistance to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar and regulates synaptic function in the brain. The moral of the story? If you’re going to drink beverages with high-fructose sweeteners, make sure you also eat foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon, walnuts and flaxseeds. Better yet, skip the high-fructose beverage. Read more from PsychCentral.

What doesn’t break your bones makes them stronger. Especially if what doesn’t break your bones is a load-bearing sport like basketball or volleyball. How to we know? Because when researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden measured the bone mass of more than 800 young men and studied their exercise habits, they found that after five years, the men who did a lot of load-bearing activities at the start of the study and those who increased their amounts of exercise during the five years had a better chance of building bone than those who weren’t as active, according to a recent report in HealthDay. And now the numbers: The researchers found that men who played load-bearing sports for four hours a week or more had an average 1.3 percent increase in hip-bone density, while who remained sedentary over the five years had an average 2.1 percent decrease in hip-bone density. Read more in HealthDay. Read an abstract of the study here.