Researchers collected data on more than 19,000 men (ages 20-79) who visited a clinic between 1979-95. Based on newer classifications for high cholesterol, some 42 percent of the patients surveyed required either therapeutic lifestyle changes or drug intervention -- meaning a potentially useless and toxic statin drug.

In comparison to patients with good cholesterol numbers, males who had to make lifestyle changes were at double the risk of death. For patients "needing" aggressive drug therapy, their mortality odds rose astronomically by a factor of seven.

The good news: Physically active men, no matter what their cholesterol numbers, reduced their odds of death from heart disease by 50 percent. The reason, experts believe, exercise lowers cholesterol is that it treats the risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome (these findings led one researcher to rename the condition physical inactivity syndrome).