Statins - side effects

MikeF
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by MikeF »

What I find puzzling/alarming is that so many on this forum who are presumably quite physically active (capable of cycling long distances and steep climbs etc) are being prescribed statins at all.
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mjr
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by mjr »

MikeF wrote:What I find puzzling/alarming is that so many on this forum who are presumably quite physically active (capable of cycling long distances and steep climbs etc) are being prescribed statins at all.

Why? We're still just as likely to inherit high cholesterol and so on.
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NATURAL ANKLING
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
MikeF wrote:What I find puzzling/alarming is that so many on this forum who are presumably quite physically active (capable of cycling long distances and steep climbs etc) are being prescribed statins at all.

I developed hypertension at 30 odd, I saw a professor after kidney scans etc, she said that 99% of cases of raised BP can not be traced to anything.
Didn't smoke, drink, not over weight at all, was eating.............more than you can imagine, exercise was most of the time I was not working, and ran five miles in the dinner hour.
I was an underweight baby.
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Stickleback
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by Stickleback »

MikeF wrote:What I find puzzling/alarming is that so many on this forum who are presumably quite physically active (capable of cycling long distances and steep climbs etc) are being prescribed statins at all.

Familial hypochondria... :)

Anyway, about side effects. My doc prescribed me Atorvastatin 40mg for high cholesterol. I immediately had scary short-term memory issues. I didn't dare drive, and it made reading impossible - I would get to the end of a paragraph and had completely forgotten what was at the start. (I had other lesser side-effects, but can't remember what they were). So I stopped taking them for a month, then tried a dose to 20mg, and had no side-effects at all.
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georgew
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by georgew »

Stickleback wrote:
MikeF wrote:What I find puzzling/alarming is that so many on this forum who are presumably quite physically active (capable of cycling long distances and steep climbs etc) are being prescribed statins at all.

Familial hypochondria... :)

Anyway, about side effects. My doc prescribed me Atorvastatin 40mg for high cholesterol. I immediately had scary short-term memory issues. I didn't dare drive, and it made reading impossible - I would get to the end of a paragraph and had completely forgotten what was at the start. (I had other lesser side-effects, but can't remember what they were). So I stopped taking them for a month, then tried a dose to 20mg, and had no side-effects at all.



This is interesting as I too had problems concentrating when on Statins. It sometimes happened as I was reversing the car and I would totally forget what I was doing in the middle of the manoeuvre. Scary indeed and I find that since I stopped taking Statins I've had no more incidents....thought it was due to my age at first and didn't connect it to my medication.
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by mjr »

I just got my test results from three months ago (!) and as I suspected (because if they'd been bad, someone would have contacted me with greater urgency!), I now seem to be below the level to start Repatha despite not taking a statin. Hooray for the Ezetimibe / Colestid / Benecol / Oatbran / kitchen sink combination therapy... :lol:

Stickleback wrote:Anyway, about side effects. My doc prescribed me Atorvastatin 40mg for high cholesterol. I immediately had scary short-term memory issues.

Mine tended to be medium-term memory, but that wasn't what stopped me taking them because no-one connected it at the time.

It seems strange to me to get prescribed 40mg Atorvastatin straight away - I always had problems whenever I started/restarted a statin (usually disrupted sleep and similar minor things, but a few times others). If you look under "Dose" on https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/formulary/b ... orvastatin then you'll see it advises stuff like "usually 10 mg once daily; if necessary, may be increased at intervals of at least 4 weeks to max. 80 mg once daily" - did your doc do that?
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Stickleback
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by Stickleback »

mjr wrote: you'll see it advises stuff like "usually 10 mg once daily; if necessary, may be increased at intervals of at least 4 weeks to max. 80 mg once daily" - did your doc do that?

No, straight in with the 40's.

Thanks for the link. I may try dropping down to half a tablet a day and see how it goes.
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by al_yrpal »

viewtopic.php?f=49&t=109431&start=75#p1111387

Statins much less effective than the Mediterranean Diet.

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661-Pete
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by 661-Pete »

Here's an article which perhaps might interest both the pro-statin and anti-statin contingents alike:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... ugs-nocebo
My experience is, I don't think statins have done me anything adverse in the 20 or so years that I've been on them.
I think all this outraged negativism is being fed by the media - for what that's worth.
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by irc »

661-Pete wrote:Here's an article which perhaps might interest both the pro-statin and anti-statin contingents alike:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... ugs-nocebo
My experience is, I don't think statins have done me anything adverse in the 20 or so years that I've been on them.
I think all this outraged negativism is being fed by the media - for what that's worth.


Worth noting the statin dose in the study was 10mg, lower than many doses people seem to be on. Low dose, low side effects I would have thought. And only one brand of statin tested.

patients aged 40–79 years with hypertension, at least three other cardiovascular risk factors, and fasting total cholesterol concentrations of 6·5 mmol/L or lower, and who were not taking a statin or fibrate, had no history of myocardial infarction, and were not being treated for angina were randomly assigned to atorvastatin 10 mg daily or matching placebo


http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/ar ... 40-6736(17)31075-9/fulltext?elsca1=tlpr

Edit - Problem with my link - but I followed the "Lancet" link from the Guardian article to get to the Lancet page.
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Re: Statins - side effects

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661-Pete wrote:Here's an article which perhaps might interest both the pro-statin and anti-statin contingents alike:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... ugs-nocebo

Pfizer-funded study of elderly white men finds low doses of a statin probably doesn't harm you... :roll: That'll be Pfizer, who recently ceased development of their next-generation cholesterol treatment (a PCSK9 inhibitor), leaving Amgen and Regeneron as the only two players in that market for now - they've got everything to gain from prolonging the statin market, with plenty of pharmacies still using Pfizer's Atorvastatin ("Lipitor") even though there are now generics.

As well as the restricted diversity, it seems a bit dodgy that they did the blind trial first because, as I know only too well, some statin side-effects take months or even years to accumulate and be diagnosed. Although also, as I know, some side-effects can present pretty quickly.

661-Pete wrote:My experience is, I don't think statins have done me anything adverse in the 20 or so years that I've been on them.
I think all this outraged negativism is being fed by the media - for what that's worth.

I suspect it muddies the waters but that in itself isn't helpful because it probably leads more doctors to resist patients reporting muscle pain after taking statins as hypochondriacs. I was not diagnosed until I could no longer stand at times, I was not the first to point the finger at my statins (a locum doctor was, after he looked at when the first symptoms were reported and noticed it was soon after my medication was changed to statins) and I will probably always be angry that it got that bad before the medics took it seriously.

If you feel it works for you then great, keep on taking the tablets, but please don't dismiss the pain these drugs have caused to others.
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Mick F
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by Mick F »

I complained well before the media hype.

No-one in the media seems to have mentioned the blinding headaches and nose-bleeds .......... let alone feeling aches and pains at the same time.

................ which have totally disappeared now, and disappeared with a week or two of stopping them.

I had been on 80mg of Atorvastatim for 10years plus.
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661-Pete
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by 661-Pete »

Some people are allergic to peanuts (though not - apparently - when I was a kid). Doesn't mean we should have a blanket ban on peanuts.

I'm reminded of the great MMR scandal of the 1990s.
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mjr
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by mjr »

661-Pete wrote:Some people are allergic to peanuts (though not - apparently - when I was a kid). Doesn't mean we should have a blanket ban on peanuts.

I'm reminded of the great MMR scandal of the 1990s.

How? The MMR avoidance scandal was started by a dodgy research paper by an author with undeclared conflicts of interest who manipulated evidence.

Whereas with statins, the evidence supporting their use is equivocal (relying on several hypotheses) and there's much more than a single research paper pointing against them, including some that suggest that making the recommended diet and exercise changes (that we're pretty sure are a near-harmless benefit otherwise) actually increases the rate of statin adverse effects.

Also, a statin has been withdrawn from the market by its maker, which never happened to an MMR vaccine as far as I know.

So how is this like the MMR fraud?
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Re: Statins - side effects

Post by softlips »

In many of the large double blinded randomised controlled trials the patients on the placebo complained of more muscle pains than those on the subject drug.

Talking with colleagues about this, many report patients who have not complained of pains until after they've been told they're taking a statin. Then they've complained of pain and come off them. That's not to say some patients don't get pain, recent studies have suggested the pains seem more prevalent in individuals with low vitamin d levels.
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