M,
Well, I understand about the paralysis factor benefiting the corporate bottom line but there are a few salient aspects of the health issue in general and cardiovascular health in particular that have changed the overall approach to health care. That change IS detrimental to corporate profits:
1. Preventing inflammation with natural products like curcumin is cheap. In addition, preventing inflammation is the key to preventing the start of a cancer.
2. The increased amount of "traffic" in your blood vessels = increased wall damage = increased inflammation = increased plaque buildup = decreased blood flow = increased probability of a clot = increased heart attack risk from the clot either coming loose and blocking flow somewhere else are doing it in position. Lack of adequate blood flow (ischemic condition) causes cell death from nutrient starvation, lack of oxygenation or lack of immune system function and garbage removal of toxic molecules from dead cells or invaders.
The issue with the cholesterol and the particles that carry it (low density or high density) is really not about size but about quantity. The more of them there are, the more often they smack into the one cell thick blood vessel wall. When they do that, not because they are called on to do it by a receptor chemical messenger on the walls, but because there are so many of them, the cholesterol inside them is distributed on the wall lining, inflammation takes place to repair the impact site with the cholesterol made use of to build collagen, the most common protein in the human body. This a case of too much of a good thing causing (eventually) restricted blood flow, clots and even herniated (over sized and inflated blood vessels).
The NMR LipoProfile (Cholesterol Particle Count) test is cheap at about $100 (in the U.S. - it's probably a lot cheaper in sane countries) and just counts the number of ALL the lipoproteins, whether they are HDL, LDL or VLDL. It's a simpler approach to figure out if you are at risk. At any rate, curcumin, ginger and quite a few other very cheap natural ingredients will keep the inflammation down and, along with moderate eating and exercise, keep the number of lipoprotein particles to goldilocks (not too few and not too many) quantity. I like it.
It takes that "good" and "bad" cholesterol baloney out of the discussion. Your liver makes 75% or more of all the cholesterol in your blood stream. Eating a high cholesterol food has little or nothing to do with how much you have in your blood. That's what the doctors don't want to deal with and what big pharma wants you to believe can only be controlled with STATINS. Statins are a last resort and dangerous. If you have no other option, a small dose statin mat be good therapy but one must bear in mind that statins are the DIRECT ROUTE to TYPE 2 DIABETES! That is already established by all the studies.
So an ounce of prevention continues to be worth a pound of Statin "cure". Here's another cheap and healthy food that big pharma doesn't want us to know about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcKPqR-vd-4&feature=player_embedded