Grandfather was in decent shape at 40 when pretty much all his arteries clogged. He is now 87 with half a single artery left in his heart. He is not what I would call "living" as much as existing.
On the other side, my mother, grandmother, and great grandmother have intense high blood pressure with no understandable reason.
Well, I figure I may have till I'm 50. Though I hope doing biking marathons would train my heart even a bit to help.
1 = http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/hypertension/speaker2.ht...
You're gonna do just fine.
b) 15-20 years of being completely and utterly crippled, unable to walk (over a few minutes at a time), eat salt at all, lay down, stand, etc... not sure if this is much of a life.
FYI: if you have clogged arteries, your heart is unable to move the water in your blood, thus if you lay down all that water gathers near the lungs and you can't inhale.
Instead, seek out professionals who don't just say everything is OK, but who tell you what specific things to do and tell you why you should do those things backed up by research. A competent MD will not be afraid to refer you to the research that they are using to make their recommendations. A real MD does not say (I'm and expert, trust me) but they are willing to point to the studies and the opinions of other experts. Experts will not all agree but usually, when something really works, there will be a majority who do prescribe that course of action.
FDA published a warning a month or two ago.
By anecdotal information, don't believe the memory problems will necessarily go away...
A representative example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Simvastatin_Surviv...