I've had lifelong naturally occurring high cholesterol readings. Whatever dietary adjustment I've tweaked, any improvement was slight. Finally, my GP who's a good friend as well, related that the lion's share is produced by my own body; that I could forego all meals opting to simply graze in a field somewhere, and my test results would probably still never reach much below 280.

So, he started me on some generic statin, can't remember which, and the side effects were such that I swore off after no more than about 2 months.