Prescribing guidelines for these medication all state that patient should attempt lifestyle modifications for 6 months before starting statins. You can probably guess how well that works out for most Americans. From a harm-reduction standpoint, it’s better to get people on meds earlier than to leave them untreated for another 6 months. It’s not that physicians don’t understand the benefits of exercise, diet, etc, they’re just realistic about the tendencies of their patients.
I have to chuckle at your dilemma though… on the one side you have real, practicing cardiologists, experts within their field, dealing with this stuff everyday. On the other side, you have people like Mark Sisson who is apparently a cookbook author and endurance athlete. Personally, I’d take my medical advice from the actual medical doctors.
Not meaning to ruin your chuckle but I also stated "other doctors" because Sisson was the only name I could specifically recall due to popularity. Assem Malhotra was one but I had to look it up, but there have been plenty of other legitimate doctors who make similar cases.
And to further comment on my skepticism, I had one cardiologist diagnose me with a slight LVH, to which I was required to get echo-caridos every six months to monitor the situation, and he wanted me to abandon any heavy weight training and discontinue rucking. I didn't. After 2 years of this, it had not progressed, so they went to annual. Next cardiologist reviewed my history and said "you never had LVH"............so forgive my pedestrian confusion. I'm sure since they were actual medical doctors, they were both right.
