If statins can reduce total cholesterol to 150 or below, what incentive is there to change the diet in ways that naturally reduce cholesterol levels?

Cholesterol is primarily an indicator of cardiovascular health, and only secondarily a causative factor affecting it.  To think that you can attain that health by manipulating that single value downward through pharmaceutical interventions is a typical error made by allopathic practitioners.  

Health is a holistic phenomenon which is best ensured by the body's own processes.  The key is to give the body the nutrients and exercise that it needs in order to do its job, and to not overload it with demands (such as the processing of unnatural foods and medicines) that it has not been evolved to handle.

Cholesterol is one factor in clot formation, which in turn can cause strokes and heart attacks.  Another, less-known, factor that may be just as significant is homocysteine, high levels of which can irritate the inner walls of the circulatory system, providing irregularities that act as targets on which clots can form.  The presence of high levels of the stress hormone cortisol is also associated with heart attacks and strokes.  

So there are factors other than cholesterol that are associated with cardiovascular health, and even if you could find a drug for every known such parameter that would manipulate its level downward, there would be others that were unknown that you would miss.  It  is, however, well-established that lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise, can lower cholesterol, homocysteine and cortisol levels.  These practices also presumably influence other secondary cardiovascular factors, some of which may not be specifically known.  Exercise, for example, strengthens the heart muscle and helps to clear debris from the cardiovasular system.

So, don't look for easy answers being sold by allopaths in the thrall of the pharmaceutical industry.  Your body has evolved over millions of years, and its myriad processes are not well understood, so it's best to stay with holistic practices that are known to be in harmony with that evolved gestalt, rather than tinkering with individual parameters that are only a small part of the overall story.

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