Hello! I have been a doctor for 21 years. My name is Georgy Olegovich Sapego. In this article, I'll show you how statins damage muscles.
Statins are the best medicine for controlling blood cholesterol levels. They are the best both when there has not been a heart attack yet, and when there has already been a heart attack.
There are different medicines. Some pills are life-saving, but they can also ruin something in the body. Statins, on the other hand, are classified as those drugs that are considered both effective and safe.
Like many effective medicines, statins have side effects. They can damage muscles. In about one in a thousand people, they cause serious muscle damage.
Two people have already asked me this week if statins damage the heart muscle. I will explain in order.
Why statins damage muscles
They don't know exactly. People are different. Someone may have a genetic predisposition for statins to be digested incorrectly in their body. It happens that the liver of such people cannot cope, and the concentration of statins in the blood increases.
Coenzyme Q10
This compound is involved in energy production. If there is little coenzyme Q10 in skeletal muscles, then they become vulnerable to statins. They also conducted research and found that statins by themselves reduce the amount of coenzyme Q10 in muscles.
What will happen to the muscles
There may be several sores:
Myalgia. These are muscle pain, a feeling of congestion, soreness to the touch, and cramps. All of this usually appears during or immediately after exercise. At the same time, no creatine kinase is released from the muscles into the blood. Myalgia is about the muscle aches that come with the flu.
Myopathy. This is muscle weakness. Creatine kinase may or may not be released into the bloodstream.
Myositis. This is muscle inflammation.
Muscle necrosis. The muscle is slowly falling apart. Here it is for sure that creatine kinase will fall out into the blood. In the best case, its concentration will increase 3-10 times more than the norm, and in the worst - 50 times.
Rhabdomyolysis. The muscle not only falls apart, but clogs the kidneys with its fragments.
Risk factors
We have already discussed this in the article on fat-soluble statins. Muscles suffer from them more often.
High doses of statins affect muscles more often.
With hypothyroidism, muscles suffer more often, but it is not entirely clear whether statins are to blame here, or they are only unmasking hypothyroid muscle problems. Everything is complicated there.
Vitamin D deficiency is also considered a risk factor. This is understandable - without vitamin D, even the risk of falls increases, because the muscles do not work well.
If you drink more than a glass of grapefruit juice a day.
There are also a bunch of medications that aggravate everything, and about which the attending physician will tell.
Physical Education
Muscle problems manifest during exercise. Therefore, any unusual physical activity can aggravate the situation. This does not mean that you need to give up the load. The muscles need it. Regular, moderate exercise makes the muscles more resistant to injury. For marathon athletes, for example, statins are not canceled before the marathon.
It would be imprudent to simply start a new life by rushing to the gym right after the statins are prescribed. We'll have to do it gradually.
Usually, if a side effect appears from strong physical exertion, then with a softer load, everything already goes away.
Where will it hurt
The arms or legs will hurt closer to the shoulder and hip joints. It will be symmetrical on both sides. It happens that it becomes painful to raise your arms above your head, it hurts to get up from a chair or climb stairs.
There are also muscle cramps at night.
All of this happens more often in the first month after starting statins.
After the abolition of statins, everything goes away quickly.
Diagnosis
Usually it is not confirmed by any analyzes. Everything is very simple there - after the appointment of statins, I got sick, after the abolition of statins, everything went away.
Too easy? Yes, too... People (and especially older people) often have muscle soreness. Maybe it's not from statins. Therefore, statins can be re-prescribed and tested again. Such reconnaissance in force. And even in this case, it is sometimes incomprehensible. They conducted research and gave such people placebos instead of statins. They complained anyway. This is a horror story now, and some are too impressionable.
To monitor creatine kinase or not to monitor?
No. She's not being monitored. Before statins are prescribed, baseline creatine kinase levels can be viewed for later comparison. But repeated tests are not done for the sake of curiosity. If your muscles hurt, see your doctor.
So what about the heart?
Nothing. It rejoices. For him, they started everything. The heart is not a skeletal muscle, so it doesn't hurt from statins.
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Read my article about Fat-soluble statins
