Well, it probably depends on one's baseline. If you're eating fast food breakfast tacos, fast food burgers, steaks and pork chops for dinner with fatty snacks between, then sure. But in these cases medical intervention with BP meds, and cholesterol lowering meds is likely first line (I'm not a med professional) while long term diet modification occurs.

In many of the cases posted here, folks are simply dealing with the long term cholesterol buildup (60 years in many cases) ... so sure, slowing progression with diet change helps, but it took a long time to get to the high cholesterol buildup.

In my case - I've been married for nearly 50 years - we eat at home most of the time. We had kids and when there was no other choice did fast food, but cooked most of the time at home. Net - I ate what my wife ate. Had a bit more alcohol, but pretty much same intakes. Her CAC zero, my CAC 1365.

I take statin, BP med (mild), 81mg aspirin, icosapent ethyl, vitamin. She takes no statin, no aspirin, no icosapent ethyl.

The genetic predisposition ... sorry, got off topic!