Statins and personality changes
- People with lower cholesterol levels are more likely to die violent deaths.
- If you put primates on a low-cholesterol diet, they become more aggressive. Lowering animals’ cholesterol seems to affect their levels of serotonin. Even fruit flies start fighting if you interfere with their serotonin levels.
- Studies have linked serotonin levels in people to violence, impulsivity, suicide, and murder.
- In a randomized controlled trial, statins were found to increase aggression in post-menopausal women though, oddly, not in men. Giving statins to Nile tilapia made them more confrontational and altered the levels of serotonin in their brains.
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