statins or not statins

Well the jury is still out, thank you all for your comments. I guess DH should ask for another opinion at our surgery. Can't hurt can it?

luluaugst Your friend's GP is right. It varies from person to person. For some people statins are absolutely essential, but for others less so.

Before taking them get your GP to calculate your life expectancy if you take them and if you do not. Essentially, the older you are and the healthier you are the smaller the gap.

I am 76 and otherwise healthy and the difference between the two figures was about 2 years. Since the life expectancy is based on what will happen over the next 10 years, by which time, in my case, I will be 86 and already well over average life expectancy for woman in the UK (82.9). I decided not to bother.

I tried them horrible results I agree with Eamon. I am waiting for them to decide we need more Cholesterol as we age as there are more bits of us to repair! A friend told me the other day that the GP had told her the difference in life expectancy between taking them and not taking them, for her, was less than a year!! can that be right?

Been thinking. My elderly neighbour was put on statins by her GP and she is now complaining of knee pain and difficulty walking so with all the posts on here I am wondering if there is any connection. I know she has regular check ups with the doctor and has told them of her mobility problems which have certainly got worse.

I was talking to an acquaintance the other day who was on statins. She is in her early seventies and in the past couple of years had severe constipation ( 2 bowel checkups at the hospital proved nothing wrong), feeling lethargic and tired so much so she was sleeping every afternoon, and her limbs and soft tissue was aching.. She read the leaflet in the statins box and realised these could all be side effects. She booked to see her GP and stopped taking the statins. She says she has never felt better - constipation gone, aches and muscle weakness gone, tiredness gone. She certainly seemed very sprightly to me and she says she will never go back on statins again.
Government guidelines are to hand them out to people once they are over a certain age as the norm. I don't think we all need them and some people have adverse symptoms as a result of taking them. Personally I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.

The most worrying part was when I read in the side effects leaflet that they can cause emorrhagic stroke! So between the devil and the deep blue sea! I didn't take them and my latest blood test is normal!

I've read that statins can cause muscle pains therefore I refuse to have anything to do with them.

Took symvastatin 5 years ago terrible leg pains until i stopped,
was put on a different one in February but told her any pains and I would come off them, instead was badly constipated 3 times in 6 weeks so stopped again, with diet have brought it down to 5.5 not the best i know but not taking statins again. Read in one of the Sundays that Eamon Holmes blamed memory loss on them

there is a large body of evidence now stating that high cholesterol is not necessarily an indication of blocked arteries -the original research was funded by the sugar industry trying to find something else to blame for increased heart disease - (my GP told me that) - but the government health experts are now saying everyone over 60 should be on statins regardless. So he has to advise me to take them and I have an equal right to refuse them. The only way to know what is going on in your arteries is a CAC (I think) test which is only available privately. This measures the placque in the arteries. So it is possible to have increased levels of cholestrol (some of which is essential for healthy living) with little or no placque. Interesting research.

I stopped taking statins after getting muscle aches, and also my local pharmacist said she would never take statins,
What does that tell you, also you have to have checks on your liver when you take statins, another red flag to me,
My sister had terrible muscle and joint pains on statins,she too has stopped them

I experienced no pains while on staying but did experience very vivid dreams leading to me sleepwalking, believing that wardrobes were toilets that I had to climb out of windows etc, very dangerous. All stopped when I stopped using statins

If I had listened to the first GP who wanted to prescribe statins I would have now been on them for 20 years. I noticed that now they are not prescribed to everybody from middle age on and the total cholesterol figure is higher than it used to be before they are mentioned.

I obviously have no knowledge about your age or medical conditions (and do not want to enquire) but ask your GP what the chances of heart attack and stroke are if you do and if you don't take statins.

In my case, being otherwise healthy, the difference between the two was so little, there was absolutely no point in me taking medication. Obviously my GP couldn't say that, but after making the calculation, she stopped trying to talk me into taking them.

Just me but I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole better ways of controlling cholesterol and there is even a thread on here with a link of new information about it not being as healthy as believed to have low cholesterol (often connected with vegan or strict veggie digests)

I am on them as no dietary changes stop my cholesterol being high - it is thought that it is familial.

I took Atorvastatin to start with and got horrendous nightmares - went back to GP and she reduced the dose. All fine now. Cholesterol a bit higher than it would have been on the higher dose, but within normal limits.

nanou, there have been many discussions in the past on statins, pros and cons- perhaps you could do a search?

It depends very much on individual cases - and why a person is on statins. For some, it is by far the best way to avoid a debilitating stroke or heart-attack.

Bordersgirl - I am so sorry about your dad. I have a good friend who will never ever forgive herself for telling her slim, fit, husband, in his early 60s but with a terrible family history and high cholesterol, NOT to take statins because of what she had read on the internet. He took a bit longer to make the coffee- she called to him - and found him dead.

I was prescribed Atorvostatin last year. I started getting heavy nosebleeds and, on reading the side effects leaflet, saw that nosebleeds are top of the list. I was afraid to go out in case I had one. I stopped taking them. I'm trying to get it down myself.

Thanks all. Yes, maybe a change of statins is the answer. Bordersgirl57 no, DH's high cholesterol runs in his family, so no easy solutions atm.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

I've taken statins for 13 years following a heart attack due to blocked arteries (smoking in the past .)
I don't have a bad reaction, though I have increasingly painful joints. I put that down to old age. And several falls.

No side effects for me. Been on them about 8 years ?

I have been taking Avorastatins with no side effects that I am aware of, other than the pleasing one that I have stopped being addicted to sweets and can totally ignore them now(!).
Too late for my teeth, unfortunately.

Thanks all. I guess the jury is still out but true, EllanVannin they do offer a great vascular protection. My husband is on Atorvastatins as well and his cholesterol is now in the norm but charliebrown same as you both, he suffers from pains in his knees not so much his legs. We'll see what the GP has got to say this time.

Statins have never affected my mobility at all and I've been taking Atorvastatins for over 12 years. What they have done is kept my cholesterol at the same acceptable level and probably helped in that way when I had a mini-stroke a couple of years ago, along with the warfarin that I take as well.
I feel pretty sure, that warfarin or not, had my cholesterol have been high ( without statins ) things could have been a lot worse, because I'm a smoker too ( I know I shouldn't ! ) Good job I have a good diet to compensate.

DH and I were on statins for a while, but we both complained of terrible pains in our legs so we took ourselves off them.