Based on information I found using clinical resources which I have access to via my employer (I work at a University with a medical school and have access to their tools, although I am not a medical professional) I found this useful note:

> The United Kingdom Lipid Clinics Programme study of 2508 subjects found that, with diet alone, 60 percent of subjects had a mean reduction in body weight of 1.8 percent, which was associated with 5 to 7 percent reductions in serum total and LDL-C.

Key thing here: when I mentioned "otherwise healthy" above that includes "not overweight and exercises." Lifestyle interventions for people with hypercholesterolemia are most effective on people who are both sedentary and overweight (or obese) who have really poor diets. None of that applies to me.

The conclusion that I ultimately came to is that, if your diet isn't awful, your BMI is normal, and you exercise every now and then, there's no dietary change that's likely to benefit by more than 5%, not enough in my case to reach normal levels. This is my "gut" assessment based on personal research and I urge you to do your own research on this matter before making any decisions.

To further complicate all of this and bring things back to the topic of this article: statins seem to reduce the risk of CVD through some means other than simply lowering cholesterol levels. There's a school of thought that even people with normal cholesterol who have other risk factors for CVD should be on statins.

So really, the question of "should I take statins" may end up being less about cholesterol specifically, and more about overall risk of CVD. This is why in my own decision making process I opted not to pursue treatment (yet) since my overall health otherwise is sound.