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Comment by mfer | Hacker News Reader

It can be genetic. That's not most people.

Far more than a super majority of those with high cholesterol are due to lifestyle. At my least yearly doctors appointment I asked about the genetic case. My doctor, in his mid-40s, said he had only had a few patients with that in his career. I've listened to lipid PhDs lecture and they talk about it being rare but present.

We cannot change the genetic case. But everyone else can be affected.

I was talking with someone recently who changed her diet. In a matter of weeks her LDL cholesterol dropped 50 points.

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Oh wow, it sounds like my understanding is off considerably. I was under the impression only 15% decrease is possible with lifestyle changes!

Can you provide any basic literature on how large of an effect can be achieved through lifestyle alone? It sounds like my vaguely recalled ~15% is way, way off.

(I do wonder how statins are so easily justified if lifestyle is so effective, but pharma profits/lobbying may explain that.)

I've personally gone from well over 200 to less than 150 via changing diet; I always thought that was the primary way to control cholesterol.

So 25%, which is well above the 15% effect I’ve seen, but you could just be an outlier. Also possible that such research suffers from self reporting problems, and many who claim they’ve made lifestyle changes are not reliable in those self reports. Fwiw, my experience is similar to yours. Lifestyle changes (weight loss moreso than diet) improved my “bad” cholesterol and glucose.

It's probably worth noting that I went from fatass to healthyish (about 50 pounds lost) so that's fairly drastic as well. We are certainly each unique medically speaking, but I'd still think that the single biggest change for the better you can make in your health is to try and kick the obesity. While BMI might be far from a perfect measure, I'd still like to get to at least the top end of the normal range.

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