Statin Side-effects: Muscle pain and weakness

Yes, a number of people get peripheral vascular disease subsequent to statin treatment. You could look at leg photos on statinstories.com. The calf muscles are often called the second heart. Unfortunately, what I'm writing is not a wild guess; it's a horrid experience.
I was trekking in the Himalayan foothills in my 70th year (among other fun things), no problems. After 7 months on simvastatin, I could no longer walk unaided.
I have no formal training in medicine, but I did argue with my doctor and also with the cardiologist I sought for a second opinion. There were two most important predictors of cardiovascular disease: the first, of course, was high LDL (and this is where the money has been made); the second is lipid ratios.
I asked, in some detail, how BOTH these things could be the number one predictor, especially since people sometimes have "high" LDL, yet very good lipid ratios. What to do, what to do?
Do you know what the incidence of adverse effects with statins is?
(PS: Those who have FH do need to do something about it. Statins were treatment of choice...especially when they were still on patent. )

@sheriff50 That's good news!
My guesses:
1. It was a lipophilic statin. Perhaps simvastatin?
2. He got on CoQ10 soon after starting the statin.
Another guess (more for the moderator, perhaps): No one, or remarkably few people, are aware that Merck took out a patent on the administration of CoQ10 with statin. Merck never used that patent, but held it until it expired. (Memory tells me it expired in 2007.)
Many years of "a statin" being prescribed without CoQ10 made this a "normal" practice.
I imagine that it can be very expensive to violate the patent of such a large corporation as Merck.
PS Does anyone have advice or experience with Neurontin? The generic is gabapentin. It's being used as a pain medication and was the first thing recommended to me by my doctors after the simvastatin did me in. (photos available on statinstories.com). But since Pfizer had marketed Neurontin so illegally that the corporation was found guilty under the RICO act (organized crime) for its program of proactively pushing it across state lines for off-label purposes, I didn't trust it. Also, I didn't want to reward such practices.

adverseeffects, thanks I hadn't understood that there was a difference. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.121.024649

@wews Hi, what is Zetia? Does it help with your neuropathy?

@naiviv I developed muscle pain and weight loss. Blood work disclosed elevated creatine kinase (muscle) and BUN (amine excertio n). I was taking 20mg/day of atorvastatin (Lipitor), a lipophilic statin. The adverse event was diagnosed as rhabdomyolysis and I was switched to Crestor. (a hydrophilic statin) Muscle pain disappeared within days and blood work returned to normal.

Wow!
1. LDL is a known killer: 1000's of patients on 100's of human clinical trials. And the primary reason CVD is the #1 killer by a long shot.
2. There are recent guidelines on target levels of ldl, but their common theme is that regardless of your current level, lower ldl is always better.
3. Statins are miracle, lifesaving, drugs, that lower your ldl and more, importantly, proven by numerous clinical trials to save lives.
4. Lots of hate on big pharma making "bunches of money" on statins. First, big pharma makes zero dollars on statins. Second, if you pay for your drugs, statins cost you only pennies per month.
5. The "nocebo" clinical trials are impressive, with gold standard designs and some involve many 1000's of patients. The nocebo effect is real.
6. Doing your own research and looking at drug package inserts (PIs) for "side effects" is foolhardy. There are FDA mandated rules and potential legal lawsuit issues that drug license owners use to describe side effects. They are very conservative in describing so-called side effects, even if unproven and/or nonsensical.
7. Some people are stuck on HDL as a lifesaver that allows them to forgo the "evil, toxic" statins. "I have high Hdl so I am safe. " Human studies have shown HDL to have minimal impact - not irrelevant but close.
8. If CoQ10 supplements work for you, that simply reinforces the nocebo effect because there are no human studies that have shown CoQ10 supplementation is effective. Very little of orally taken CoQ10 actually gets anywhere in your body; that is, it has low "bioavailability." This is thought to be because it is not soluble in water, "not hydrophilic." Clinical researchers attribute this low bioavailability to it's mostly undetectable, or at least highly variable activity in alleviating muscle aches.
10. The muscle tissue that contains a significantly higher density of mitochondria, for obvious reasons, and therefore is highly susceptible to interruptions on the e-transport chain, is heart. But, anecdotally, the side effect most often reported is leg muscle aches??? As a side note, there is a body of research investigating CoQ10 as a treatment for heart failure - but so far shows no real activity.
11. My own view is that, even though the nocebo effect is real, if taking supplemental CoQ10 allows you to use statins and continue with them, that is fantastic!

@joyster15 the staten the doctor out me in gave me neuropathy. Zetia is an alternative drug used to treat cholesterol and I do not have neuropathy on it.

Hi, thanks for replying. So Zetia helps with neuropathy?