High Cholesterol Not All Bad

While high cholesterol increases the risk of heart disease, it also appears to be associated with better performance on tests of mental skills like memory, concentration, abstract reasoning and organization.  That news, reported in the New York Times, comes from researchers working on famous Framingham heart study, an 18-year-research project that just keeps producing. The Times reports that the researchers were able to look only at the total cholesterol levels, and so could not tell whether the so-called bad and good cholesterol had different effects.