I have been doing a small amount of research lately into certain practices and lifestyles which tend to go together. For example...meditation, chanting, low fat and low protein diets,fasting,antidepressants, supposedly positive mind control programs, the increased suggestibility of the people, flouride,guided meditation (a form of hypnosis)...etc...are all often accepted together as either a road to enlightenment or health.. Maybe we need to take a step back and take a look at what effect these items have on the brain. What about those swirling visual patterns we stare at when listening to talk shows on the internet. I would bet that those patterns are meant to put us into a higher state of suggestibility.The article below just talks about one small facet of this seeming effort to put us all into la la land. Our bodies and brains need cholesterol. We are now even hearing from the mainstream media that a low cholesterol diet will HELP our memory and Alzheimer's. I have a feeling we need to do our research concerning this matter.
Learning, Your Memory, and Cholesterol
July, 2005
by Chris Masterjohn
One of the many important roles cholesterol plays in the body is in our nervous system, enabling learning and memory to take place. In fact, one of the reasons that sleep is beneficial to our learning and memory is because it enables our brain to make more cholesterol!
While the war on cholesterol is waged full-speed ahead, and many web sites are now touting low-fat, low-cholesterol diets as "brain-healthy" due to unfortunate misinterpretations about the role of a cholesterol byproduct in Alzheimer's disease, science is continually showing that cholesterol is one of the most important parts of our brains.
Sleep, Memory, Learning, and Cholesterol
Evidence to date strongly supports the concept that sleep plays an important role in increasing performance of newly learned activities, consolidating memories, and increasing brain plasticity-- which is the ability to form new, as well as break, connections between neurons called synapses.
These benefits of sleep are not simply the absence of stress from sleep-deprivation, but an independent, critical role, in the actual process of learning and memory-formation.1
But why?
Exciting research was published in the pages of Neuron last year (2004),2 identified about 100 genes that increase their activity during sleep. They found about as many that increased their activity during wake, and others whose activity varied with circadian rhythm, independent of sleep or wakefulness.
While there are many important cellular and molecular events that happen during sleep, and we are only cracking the surface in our understanding of them, one of the things this study showed is that cholesterol synthesis increases during sleep-- which, given the research described below, undoubtedly is part of the reason sleep is beneficial to mental functioning.
Cholesterol is abundant in the tissue of the brain and nervous system. Myelin, which covers nerve axons to help conduct the electrical impulses that make movement, sensation, thinking, learning, and remembering possible, is over one fifth cholesterol by weight.3
Even though the brain only makes up 2% of the body's weight, it contains 25% of its cholesterol.4
One of the groups of genes that the above study found to be upregulated during sleep were genes important for the synthesis and maintenance of myelin, including myelin structural proteins and genes relating to the synthesis and transport of cholesterol.
But the benefits of cholesterol extend beyond both sleep and myelin. In fact, in 2001, cholesterol was found to be the most important factor in the formation of synapses, the basis of our learning and memory.
READ MORE.... http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Memory-And-Cholesterol.html
KNOW YOUR FATS..... AN IMPORTANT BOOK
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