If you want to expand your education just do a search of cholesterol in the
archives. Go to the archives site and search cholesterol without any date
limit. There are hundreds of posts on the topic. [The only topic that I
have searched that has more "hits" is yeast.] If you have time constraints
you can search over the last 2 years.

One poster said that her doctor wouldn't do a cholesterol screening on her
because breastfeeding mothers have high levels which is normal and healthy
for them while they are making milk for their infants.

One of the problems with measuring everything is that many who are doing
the measuring do not know how to interpret the results. Obviously a healthy
woman who is pregnant or is breastfeeding will not have the same
cholesterol reading as a 40 year old man. Also a woman who has given birth
but is not breastfeeding will have lower levels and *may* be considered the
norm in the U.S.

But what was basic to most of the informative posts is the following:

Robert H. Knopp at the Univ of Washington has done a number
of small studies on pregnant and postpartum (bf and non-bf) women and
lipids. He has shown that all pregnant women are hypercholesterolemic,
and cholesterol levels return to prepregnant levels within a few months
after birth in the non-lactating woman (with a lot of individual
variability). Lactation does not affect a woman's LDL (low density
lipoprotein cholesterol--the so called "bad cholesterol"), but DOES raise
HDL (high density lipoprotein cholesterol--the "good chol"). An elevation
in HDL will raise total cholesterol which is often used as screening
test. It is impossible to have too much HDL--the more the better, so an
elevated total chol that is due to elevated HDL and nl or low level of
LDL is NOT a problem. HDL remains elevated during lactation, and for
women with a long lifetime duration of lactation, the elevation in HDL
may help protect against atherosclerosis (and of course, heart disese is
the #1 cause of death for women as for men in the US). JAMA Feb 17,
1989--Vol 261, No. 1 has a Q & A regarding cholesterol levels and a
breastfeeding mother, with 7 references at the end.

Elizabeth (Beth) Williams, MD, MPH, IBCLC
[log in to unmask]

This is an old reference, but I'm sure that the information is in more
current literature.

Another post reads:

At the forums at Dr. Hale's Website,
http://neonatal.ttuhsc.edu/lact/
searching with "cholesterol" brings up several short answers to specific
queries, in which he discouraged the use of lipid-lowering drugs during
Lactation because cholesterol in breastmilk is important to infant
development.

Pat Gima, IBCLC
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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