First of all the notion that eating a diet high in cholesterol will lead to high blood [cholesterol] is a myth. Your body produces cholesterol for many reasons. One of which is to help solubilize dietary fat. If you eat too much fat (especially saturated fats - which are more difficult to solubilize) your body will have to produce a commensurate amount of cholesterol. Once these fats are emulsified by the cholesterol and enter the bloodstream to begin metabolism, they are then known as LDLs.
Eat less fats (especially saturated and hydrogenated fats) and your body will not need to produce as much cholesterol and your LDL levels will drop.
One of the problems with taking statins is that (as alluded to above) cholesterol is necessary for a metric shit-ton of vital metabolic processes throughout the body. Steroid hormones require cholesterol's chemical backbone as a building block for synthesis, also it as an integral component in cells' plasma membranes. (I know there are MANY other uses, but it's been a long time since I studied this stuff.) Using statins to lower the body's ability to produce cholesterol seems like it might have more effects than just lowering blood concentrations of cholesterol itself.
The body tends to produce only as much cholesterol as it needs. If it does happen to overproduce cholesterol, it has kind of an overflow valve where excess cholesterol is released from the liver as bile salts. This is what happens if you reduce saturated fat intake - the body's need for digestive cholesterol is reduced, so excess unused cholesterol us done away with. Eating foods high in soluble fiber also helps here. Soluble fiber globs together with the bile salts and make it harder for the large intestine to reabsorb them - ensuring that most of them just get flushed out.
Certainly there are cases (genetic predisposition to overproduction) where statins are the only alternative to high cholesterol. But it seems lazy to just throw some pills at the problem without exhausting all other alternatives first.
Exercise, eat a balanced diet with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, limit saturated and hydrogenated fat intake and avoid tobacco and excessive alcohol. This advice could save many lives and lower health insurance costs if doctors would just tell patients that by default. Instead, many doctors these days seem to just take a big shit on the hippocratic oath and, instead, do their best to help drug companies increase profits.
Proud Marine Dad said:
The body can also produce carbs. They are not an essential nutrient.