Statin Side-effects: Muscle pain and weakness

My cholesterol is higher than a kite. I do not believe in Statins. I have read many times that people with high cholesterol live longer than those with low. I have had high for 17 years plus and am 76. It is a ploy from big pharma to intimidate people to take all their life so they are making money all their life. Just my opinion based on lots of reading. Everyone has a choice on what they believe.

That is the kind of story I love to hear!!!

I have read more than once that people with high cholesterol live longer. Wonderful that you changed your diet!!! I am NOT telling you what to do, only the I would wean myself off the statins buy cutting a sliver off every day until gone. My cholesterol is between 276 and 299. I am 76 female and weigh 121 lbs. I am in better health than almost everyone I know and most are 10-20 years less than me and most take drugs for this and that. I have a list of people I knew that died and some 20-30 yrs younger.

After a few months on a very small dose of rosuvastatin (Crestor), I began experiencing severe shortness of breath and was easily exhausted, even though I have I have always been active and a regular exerciser. I thought I needed a cardiac cath, but my daughter, a family nurse practitioner, was not convinced it was my heart. She asked me to stop the rosuvastatin for a few days. Four days after stopping the statin, I felt like a new person! The shortness of breath and exhaustion ended. (These were not they typical side effects of statins.) I could not believe that statin could make me feel so terrible! My cardiologist switched me to Lipitor, a fat soluble (as opposed to water soluble) statin. Now that I know what caused it before, I will be watching closely to see if I have the same bad symptoms.

I understood that Lipitor is much stronger (high intensity) than Crestor. My husband had side effects with Lipitor, then his cardiologist changed it to a lower intensity statin, pitavastatin, and still he had side effects if SOB, muscle pain and feeling of heaviness in his legs. He stopped the statins and side effects stopped. Every person is different and reacts differently to statins.
Hope the change for you works. Stay well.
In my case my cardiologist prescribed pitavastatin 1mg daily one month ago. I started taking it with no issues but last a few days ago I had this stabbing pain in my right ankle which radiated to my calf and inner thigh that I thought it had to be the statin. But I also at that time I drove for 7 hrs to a friend’s home for Thanksgiving and probably my right leg was affected by this long drive. I called my dr and he told me to stop it to see if symptoms go away. I have stopped it and will give a chance to see if my leg keeps hurting. The ankle stabbing pain has gone, my leg feels better, but I am home now. So I will stop it for 2-3 days and if I feel all well, I will start the statin again. If by then the same symptoms start all over again I will know it is the statin.

I have severe degenerative disc disease and had 24 surgeries on my spine. I have fusions from T2 down to S1 and I take morphine every day and have for 15 years. When I was in my 50’s my doctor put me on statins in addition to my other meds. About a month later my legs stated to ache and I attributed it to my spine and ignored it them I started to feel like I had the flu ,my whole body ached. This feeling got worse until my wife came home from work and I was passed out on the floor. I woke up in the hospital only to find out that I had
rhabdomyolysis and it caused my kidneys to shut down. The cause of rhabdo was my statin I was taking. Rhabdomyolysis is a condition that statins can cause where your muscle tissues break down and that causes them to release a chemical called creatinine kinase or CK. Normally your kidneys filter CK about of your body but the statins break down so much muscle that it overwhelms the kidneys withCK and shuts them down. Luckily a few IV infusions at the hospital cleared up the CK in my blood which was 17,000 times the normal value . Hence…… I cannot or will not take statins again.

You are the first person that I have heard who had suffered from rhabdomyolysis. Honestly I have heard so many things about statins that I am rethinking in taking them. The other alternatives are worse. I will stick to my Mediterranean diet, exercise and keep doing what I have been doing. Get well and thanks for your input.

Of course what you propose to do for yourself has a great chance of doing good by you, and I do commend you to resisting any medications that progressive and useful alternations of lifestyle might address. Note that literally scores of millions of people take statins at various doses, and not all statins are alike or are meant to affect the patient in quite the same way, so right there you'll understand that there are statins, and then there are statins. If they presented a grave risk to many people, they wouldn't still be so widely prescribed. I have no detectable symptoms of statins use, and I went from two years on atorvastatin at 20mg PO to 40 mg when my cardiologist was concerned of heart ischemia due to my increased AF starting two years ago. He hasn't seen fit to reduce it again, but I have felt no difference. A woman I know of takes 100mg PO because she's literally a walking cholesterol time-bomb with exceedingly high numbers...scary numbers. She and her husband are quite active, and I have heard no complaints. So, one's incurred liability to any drug are not going to be known until the prescribed dose is taken. Please don't do more than to tinker with your diet, but substantially, so that you see if you can improve your numbers, also substantially. If it turns out that your best efforts are not panning out, I urge you to at least try statins for six full months to see if/how you tolerate them, and maybe they will help with the numbers that the diet doesn't/can't.

Thank you. Stay well.