Hello Everyone,
My doctor started me on 10-mg of Lipitor three months ago. I just had a new blood test and the results from Lipitor have been very good. My LDL dropped from 136 to 60. Cholesterol dropped from 225 to 131.
I have been experiencing some minor side effects from the Lipitor.
Muscle soreness and less endurance during strenuous physical activity. I also notice I am feeling tired in the evening after a busy day. Prior to starting on Lipitor I had more energy in the evening.
My doctor says these minor side effects are worth living with because I am experiencing excellent results from the 10-mg of Lipitor. He does not seem comfortable prescribing a different statin or changing the dosage.
My question is has anyone had similar Lipitor side effects and then switched to another statin that did not produce these side effects?

I've never been on a statin myself, but I have a brother who had similar problems with Baycol, Lipitor, and Crestor. He is now on Vytorin, but hasn't been on it long enough to know whether or not he'll have problems with it, too.

I am personally on niacin therapy, taking 750 mg daily Endur-acin, divided 3x with meals, and have achieved good control and no side effects. My initial numbers were worse than yours. I did combine it with dietary changes, though.

Your initial numbers of TC 225 and LDL 136 are not particularly high and could be lowered to within the desired range by dietary changes alone for many people. Did you try dietary and exercise changes before you reached those numbers? Or do you have other risk factors, such as a previous heart attack, that it is more critical that you get the numbers down fast?

I would not consider muscle soreness and less endurance during strenuous physical activity a minor side effect. For me that would be a serious sign that you are not tolerating the Lipitor. Are you having regular liver enzyme blood tests done?

Your numbers are not elevated so unless you have several other risk factors I would seriously consider getting off the statins, losing weight (if necessary), reducing carbohydrates in your diet and 60 minutes of aerobic exercise each day. Try that for three to six months and re-test.

You should also consider taking a fish oil supplement that is high in EPA/DHA omega-3 fatty acids if you aren't taking one now.

Your total is really low now , really low levels have been tied to other problems . I would ask the doctor if you can cut the pills in half , sounds like you would be alright with just 5 mgs, don't know if they make 5 mg or not .
Lipitor problems may not show up for many months to years after . It was 6 months for me before my peripheral neuropathy started showing up and the doctor of course said it couldn't be the lipitor so I kept taking the stuff for like 2 years and the pn got worse and worse . I now have permanent nerve damage in both feet thanks to lipitor and zocor . My life literally has not been the same since this has happened. Keep a very close eye on any side effects , sore muscles are definetly something to keep an eye on . Also I didn't feel like doing anything when taking lipitor 10 mgs . I would also wake up in the morning and I could barely walk to the bathroom my knees hurt so bad after haveing gone to bed perfectly fine . Don't ignore any sign and don't let the doctor tell it can't be the medicine .

Atlas, are you sure you even NEED to be on Lipitor? Your original total chol. and LDL numbers aren't really very high at all, and if your trigs are low and your HDL is fairly high, you might not need a statin drug. What are your ratios?

My most recent total was about 257, LDL of around 153, trigs of 66 and HDL 93. At the cardiologist's suggestion (because he didn't think I needed a statin and I was confused about the issue and hesitant to take Lipitor), I had the ($400) scan done to look for calcium deposits in heart arteries. It takes 5 minutes and I used the state-of-the-art facility at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

I had a ZERO score meaning NO calcium buildup visible at all. I was told I needed NO statin, though my internist had been nagging me about it for several years because of my relatively high total chol. and LDL.

If you have any muscle pains you should tell your doctor right away, and if your trigs are low and HDL fairly high, you might not even NEED a drug at all. Keep researching!

I agree with your doctor, atlas,

Minor soreness on exercise and tired nights are slight symptoms that shouldn't cause discontinuance of a drug that is giving you such superb results.
Worse yet, those symptoms are so common to MANY, MANY conditions and life styles, Remember, we are at the end of a COLD December and many people are feeling a bit under the weather these weeks.

You could try snapping the 10's in half as Viper suggested...perhaps your results would still be stellar. It would possibly cut the risk of side effects and CERTAINLY cut the cost in half.

Before you deep-six the Lipitor, if that is your choice, do a month's trial without it and see if you sanp back to full activity with no muscle soreness...then add it back and see if the symptoms return.

I think that fishing for a different statin is likely to be wasted effort...but that's just an opinion from somebody who is happy with his Lipitor 10mg.

I feel that often if you look HARD enough for drug side-effects, you are likely to find them...and that goes for almost any drug.

Cheer Up - Your ratios all all excellent, wish all doctors were like yours.
Atlas - 225 is not high, diet and excercise is always recommended for the first six months and will improve ratios.

I've never been on a statin myself, but I have a brother who had similar problems with Baycol, Lipitor, and Crestor. He is now on Vytorin, but hasn't been on it long enough to know whether or not he'll have problems with it, too.

I am personally on niacin therapy, taking 750 mg daily Endur-acin, divided 3x with meals, and have achieved good control and no side effects. My initial numbers were worse than yours. I did combine it with dietary changes, though.

Your initial numbers of TC 225 and LDL 136 are not particularly high and could be lowered to within the desired range by dietary changes alone for many people. Did you try dietary and exercise changes before you reached those numbers? Or do you have other risk factors, such as a previous heart attack, that it is more critical that you get the numbers down fast?

I tried dietary changes for the past year in an effort and improve my TC-225 and LDL-136 without using statins. As part of this I reduced my consumption of red meat to maybe one meal every 60 days. My father had his first heart attack at age 37 and he died from his 2nd heart attack at age 43. The dietary changes produced negligible improvement. My doctor felt that at age 52 I should get my numbers down low so he put me on Lipitor.

Cheer Up - Your ratios all all excellent, wish all doctors were like yours.
Atlas - 225 is not high, diet and excercise is always recommended for the first six months and will improve ratios.

I did try to improve my numbers using diet for a full year before my doctor strongly suggested it was time to start drug therapy using Lipitor. I walk my dogs seven days a week and I am not overweight so the diet and exercise was just not producing the results I need. I also have some family history of heart disease.

I would not consider muscle soreness and less endurance during strenuous physical activity a minor side effect. For me that would be a serious sign that you are not tolerating the Lipitor. Are you having regular liver enzyme blood tests done?

Your numbers are not elevated so unless you have several other risk factors I would seriously consider getting off the statins, losing weight (if necessary), reducing carbohydrates in your diet and 60 minutes of aerobic exercise each day. Try that for three to six months and re-test.

You should also consider taking a fish oil supplement that is high in EPA/DHA omega-3 fatty acids if you aren't taking one now.

Thanks for the advice. My doctor did not order a liver enzyme test but I will ask him about it. My previous blood tests have been standard lipid panels. I will also look into the fish oil supplement. As for exercise I walk my dogs for 40 minutes every evening, weather permitting, and I do watch my diet (no red meat and low carb intake).

My father had his first heart attack at age 37 and he died from his 2nd heart attack at age 43. .
This changes everything. His risks are far more significant than what may or may not come from 10 mg of zocor. For those that are in a position of speculation and conjecture about what cholesterol levels are "acceptable", the day you have your heart attack will radiacally change the context which formulates your current positions. When that happens, speculation over "why" takes an ominous and deadly serious persepctive that is impossible to even contemplate until you are there.

The meaning of risk changes. Risk is not over what will the statin do to me (1:10,000), it is when might number two come (1:???)and what straws should I cling to and what scientific evidence can I evaluate to make the best choices understanding that risk will always a part of the the equation.

For those with history of MI events or immediate family members with history of MI events at young ages, the risk associated with various treatments became weighed against the imposing and real risk of heart disease. The difference in risk of serious side effects from statins is beyong miniscule when juxtaposed to the far greater risks of heart disease and heart attack for those with personal or family factors.

The question of pros and cons of any treatment for any health concern becomes quite a different debate if you personally become afflicted with that particular ailment.

I've been taking the statin Zocor. I started out with 10 mgs, no problems but then my doctor upped it to 20 mgs and my back started hurting. Then I was prescribed another drug and I took it for three day and my back hurt for a month, so my doctor put my back on the 10 mgs Zocor. If I had to go through pain with the drugs I'd rather take my chances on the high cholesterol and your numbers were lower than mine before I started taking Zocor. Your numbers, before you started taking Lipitor, were slightly higher than mine are taking the Zocor.

If I had to go through pain with the drugs I'd rather take my chances on the high cholesterol and your numbers were lower than mine before I started taking Zocor.
Would your considerations be the same if your father had a heart attack at 37 and died of a second heart attack soon later? Do you have "high" risk factors?

I echo pcovers,
Imagine how foolish one would feel if he discontinued Lipitor because his knees hurt occasionally and he had less energy at the gym and then woke up with his chest sewn with steel wires, having been splayed open from collarbone to diaphragm. And then there's the months or years of leg pain from the farmed veins that were cut out from ankle to groin.

There's discomfort (or worse, the mere fear of POSSIBLE discomfort) and there's DEATH. When these become your choices, the course becomes VERY clear. When you're lying on your deathbead, there's got to be some kind of irony in your last thought being: "But Doctor MERCOLA said..."

With a family history like that, I agree that "risk" means something entirely different than for those of us with no known heart condition and a family history of strokes or heart attacks at age 70 or 80 or 90. But it all depends upon how severely the side effects affect one's life, too. You have described the muscle soreness as minor. As long as you feel it is minor, then by all means stay the course. It is when side effects become so serious that one feels they are no longer really living that IMHO one should evaluate what one sees as "risk."

If it were me, I'd start on the fish oil supplements. Maybe also start eating more legumes and other foods high in soluble fiber, if you're not already doing so. Perhaps with those changes you might be able to reduce the dose several months down the road. I doubt those changes would be enough to get off the Lipitor completely, but a reduced dose might decrease the side effects.

Uff-da, i totally agree. I was on lipitor for three yrs or so. i complained to my gp and my endo of muscle pain. It was so severe i could not walk, bend or sit at times. they tried to convince me it was arthiritis(sp?) but i knew it was the lipitor. Finally, i went to the er with chest pains, and was taken on the lipitor.

In the meantime, they're now trying to determine what's wrong with my liver. I say it was the lipitor.