Fat and the Brain

Recently, we’ve talked about good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, and associated them with HDLs and LDLs, respectively. As a reminder, HDLs collect cholesterol from the arteries and transport them back to the liver to be degraded and reused, while LDLs distribute the cholesterol/fat from the liver to the rest of the body. However, why do we need LDLs if they’re associated with bad cholesterol? LDLs are really only bad when they largely outnumber the HDL level in the body, but besides that its very useful for us to transport fat around our bodies. Lately one of my friends was hospitalized for his lack of fine motor control and decreased ability to control his reflexes. The doctors eventually found that the axon sheathes covering the axons in his brain were either thinning or had developed thinner than they should have and therefore his neurons were firing inappropriately. They also found that he was eating a lot of butter and creamer while he was in the hospital. Interestingly, it turns out that the myelin sheathes covering our axons are directly affected by how much fat we intake. This is a reason that its good to eat fat! Especially during early development. We need myelination in our brains in order for our neurons to fire properly and so that we can function properly.