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Having a low cholesterol lowers your chances of a heart attack and stroke - but does it increase the risk of a stroke caused by a haemorrhage or bleeding? Having a low cholesterol lowers your chances of a heart attack and stroke caused by a clot. But many people believe that a trade off is an increased risk of a stroke caused by a haemorrhage or bleeding. One reason for thinking this is that in countries like Japan and Korea, where low cholesterols are common, so are haemorrhagic strokes. Which is why a team of researchers followed 800,000 Korean civil servants over ten years. Analysing about 4000 instances of haemorrhagic stroke, low cholesterol was not a risk unless there was high blood pressure too. But when they looked further, people with low cholesterol levels actually only got brain bleeds if they were moderate to heavy drinkers, as measured by liver damage. It's known that heavy drinkers tend to have lower than average cholesterols - and higher blood pressures so the drinking would explain the strokes not the low cholesterol. It's a comfort to people on cholesterol lowering medications that this trade off on stroke risk is unlikely.
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