Statins and physical performance

[Patrick.Royston]

Hello all,

I am a reasonably fit man of 62. Last October, to my shock and surprise, I had a mild heart attack, which began while I was swimming. Well, I say mild, but on angiogram, the most important coronary artery, the left anterior descending, was found to be 95% blocked by plaque. That's not "mild", that's serious. The cardiologist who cared for me was shocked I was walking around with essentially no symptoms of chest pain, etc. He expertly implanted a stent in the offending artery, and after a day in hospital to recover, I was discharged.

I was prescribed a standard cocktail of daily drugs, including 20mg Lipitor. I duly took the Lipitor regularly and conscientiously each night. This continued uneventfully until this month (Match 2011), when I began to experience a loss of physical performance. I was in the habit of swimming 60 lengths twice a week and jogging for about an hour twice a week. I started to notice that I couldn't any longer do my usual amount of exercise. I felt generally less strong, had less endurance and was more out of breath than I was accustomed to.

I am occasionally in touch with Dr Malcolm Kendrick, and mentioned this change to him. He pointed me to a recent academic study of Austrian athletes, most of whom were found unable to tolerate statins for high cholesterol. Their performance simply deteriorated, to return again in just a few days after they stopped taking a statin. If anyone is interested, I can provide a PDF of this very relevant report.

Although I am not an athlete, the message for me from this interesting study was clear. Statins damage your ability to perform. And it's subtle. Unless you are exercising hard (and I do), you may not notice that anything unusual has happened. So (with some trepidation) I did the obvious thing: I stopped taking the Lipitor. Lo and behold within about 3 days my running time (for a standard course) had reduced by 10% and my swimming time for 50 lengths of crawl had improved by about 4%. Great!

The odd thing is, I did not experience this drop in performance until I had been taking Lipitor for about 5 months. I think my body must have been resisting the muscle-damaging effects of the drug for quite some time, but then for some reason got overwhelmed. Who knows? But the effect of takign the statin was in the end very clear, and the effect of stopping it, equally clear. When you are pushing your body hard, you get quite sensitive to what it can and can't comfortably do. You notice changes, small and large.

The downside, of course, is that because I am no longer taking the statin, I am exposed to a somewhat higher risk of a 2nd heart attack. But in the end, it comes down to quality vs. quantity of life. I would prefer to opt for the quality, even at the expense of quantity. I value my exercise. And how many other long-term side-effects of statins were queueing up unseen, to pounce later? Hopefully, I will never know!

[lars999]

Patrick,

YES!!! Lipitor can and does drastically reduce physical and aerobic capacity of older men. And, yes, it can take a few years to do so. I was on 10 mg Lipitor for some years before it trashed me.

By June 2011 my physical abilities were down to driving about one hour on Interstates, using cruse control, and at most one mile, slow hikes. I had become a really decrept old man, 99 going on dead in my assessment. After reading many posts here, as well as many of Dr. Graveline and others reports, newsletters, etc. and checking some salient points against medical sources, I quit Lipitor on 10 June 2011. Two weeks later I was able to drive 4 consequtive days for 6-7 hours each -- WAY beyond what I could do only two months previously. This improvement has continued and is described in threads I posted on this forum.

I was prescribed Lipitor simply because my total cholesterol was higher than current guidelines of less than 200. No heart attack yet, don't expect one, based on non-invasive assessments of plaque in major arteries (little or no stable plaque on doppler ultrasonic studies). There are no reliable means of non-invasively determining vulnerable plaque, so, there may be one such plaque "boil" just waiting to treat me to a heart attack.

Doctor that prescribed Lipitor for me is a "Cholesterol Quack", as nearly all GPs and cardiologists seem to be. Purveyors of the Cholesterol Scam and its fellow travelor -- Statin Drug Abuse, each and every one of them. They have a very special place high up on my S-List. I was assured "Nearly no side effects, and what there are are mild and reversable." Sheer BS!!

I am in my early 70s and was 66 or 67 when perscribed Lipitor, that is, at or beyond the age where all statin drugs provide no measurable protection against a heart attack, first or second. Unfortunately, I did my usual due diligance years later than I should have. Now NO doctor escapes scrutiny -- I am the final medical judge of what treatment, if any, I will participate in.

Now I am again able to cross country ski in mountains for 2-3+ hours with only brief rests when breathing and heart rate need to recover -- and I can do this for 3-4 consequtive days, again, WAY beyond my pathetic performance all last ski season.

Until recently, I took Acetyl-L-Carnitine and CoQ10 (as ubiquinol) 3X daily and found this made quite noticable improvements in my physical and aerobic capacities. Recently I only take it before ski trips or other prolonged aerobic activity.

I still have muscle and nerve damage that limits my balance and coordination with right leg, which is greatly restricting my downhill skiing to the easier slopes (just above beginner levels) -- no more long intermediate slopes and no hope of trying the easier expert slopes. I can ski ALL the local expert cross country trails that are groomed, so, not all is lost.

ALL statin drugs are really very sofiticated poisons that should never have been granted FDA approval for widespread use. They are NOT the miracle drugs GPs and cardiologists tout them as.

Lars

[Patrick.Royston]

Great response, Lars, thanks for your comments. It's good to hear of someone with a similar story. Patrick.

[uncle2blade]

Patrick, There is a person that use to post on this sight, and might still monitor the posts here. I received a lot of help from the posts from "adec" joined sept. 14th 2006. Go to member list to find this person. Read the posts there. You will find supplements, that will reduce the plaque in your system. It"s not the cholesterol that blocks things up it's the plaque. You can read my posts to see what I take. I've had a lot of good results. Best to you, Craig

[Patrick.Royston]

Thanks for the tip Craig, good :idea:. I will check it out. Patrick.

[Nancy W]

Thought I would weigh in on your post, too. Your drop in performance may not be due to the classic statin "muscle damage," but rather to mitochondrial damage. Mitochondria are our energy factories. I am a physical therapist. I had the muscle damage/muscle pain/elevated CK after 1 month of Lipitor many years ago, but had a very different reaction to Red Yeast Rice in 2009 with incredible fatigue and painful neuropathy. I was 60 at the time, swimming aerobically 60 minutes, five days a week. Within three weeks, I couldn't do anything in the pool after 10 minutes. It has been a pretty gradual return over the last 18 months or so. I can do an hour again, and almost at an aerobic pace. Did a recent treadmill and even though I hadn't exercised much in the last six months, as I was caregiving my dying father, I still (after my less than best exercise tolerance) did 50% better than the majority of 60 year olds. So, I am on the mend. Take your time. Some of us had to cut way back, or stop exercising for a time, build back gradually. Feed your mitochondria. Check into Dr. Graveline's newest book for more info on mitochondria. Good luck!

[Patrick.Royston]

Thanks Nancy, it's great when folks weigh in. I always learn something. Yoo could well be right about mitochondrial effects, although I am no biologist so for me I suppose the issue remains in the realms of speculation. It's startling to hear how this supposedly therapeutic family of drugs (statins) can harm people, and how long it can take to recover. On that score I count myself lucky so far.

Glad to hear you are making steady progress. Patrick.

[lars999]

Partick,

My experience is similar to Nancy's in some respects. Last ski season my cross country skiing performance was consistantly as follows: 1) ski one day for about two hours, in 10-15 min intervals, followed my another 10-15 minutes of absolutely essential recovery breathing, heart rate decrease, muscle fatigue abatement, 2) spend 30-60 minutes resting after skiing, just to have enough energy to safely drive down the mountain (20 miles of steep, winding roads, sometimes snow and ice covered), 3) at least two days of rest before I could do it again. This pattern is typical of mitochrondrial limitations.

Once I had quit Lipitor and got back to physical and especially aerobic exercise, I was very careful to determine that I could go back, day after day, and do same level of workout. THEN I started to increase the intensity. Over a few months, this got me back to where I was able to pass fully a treadmill cardio stress test, up to heart rate of 160 bpm (150 is normally considered max for men my age). 160 has been my standard max level for sustainted aerobic activity since my 40s, with max of 185 or so (controlled treadmill cardio stress test) in my mid 50s. Cross country skiing this season, I routine run my heart rate up to 140-150s on uphills -- and it only takes a minute or two to recover to 120-130s, no muscle fatigue limits reached.

I still find that my performance is noticably better if I take CoQ10 (as ubiquinol) before and during skiing, with food, and Acetyl-L-Carnitine at least twice before starting skiing. This to me suggests that my bod is not producing enough of one or both of these chemicals to support this level of physical activity, both being essential to maximum performance of mitochondria. Production of both these biochemicals dereases with age, so someone in 70s is not expected to produce as much as in 50s or even 60s. ALL statin drugs drastically decrease production of CoQ10. Guidelines in EU and Canada recommend that CoQ10 be prescribed to anyone taking any statin drug -- however, US FDA has resolutely refused to make same recommendation. Expect that your doctor/cardiologist will look askance as this, just another measure of their quackiness about statins.

Some months after the cardio treadmill stress test, I had a pulmonary function test, which found that I was in the middle of the wide spread for men my age. Still, even after months of cross country skiing in mountains, my aerobic capacity is the limiting factor and what causes me to pause for a few minutes to catch my breath. Skiing altitude is 9000-10000 feet and I live at 5000 feet.

Lately, I have started skiing ungroommed expert trails after 10-12 inch spring snow falls. This results in need to break trail in heavy snow, which is physically demanding activity, especially when going uphill (typical). Two hours of this, plus skiing back down in my tracks, leaves me needing a full day's rest. In part, I view this as simply result of much higher needed physical effort -- this is not eazy skiing for most skiers half my age.

Comparied to many others, who describe their much greater physical degradation by statin drugs, I got off rather lightly. Still, I roundly curse the whole statin-drug circus and the cholesterol scam that it is in response to. Modern medicine at its worst!!

Glad to hear that there are others that have also had less drastic debilitation from statin drugs.

Lars

[Patrick.Royston]

Good stuff, Lars, thanks. You sound pretty darn fit to me! I live at about 0 feet above sea level, and no snow is (normally) in sight, certainly no cross-country skiing.

Incidentally what doses of ubiquinol and L-carnitine do you have? Is there any science behind these numbers, or it's informed guesswork (see what works)? Patrick.

[lars999]

Partick,

Acetyl-L-Carnitine dosage was 2X500 mg three times daily for many months. Recently it is more often 2X500 twice a day. Basically, I started with a commonly listed dosage and increased it till I thought I was seeing some benifit.

CoQ10 as Ubiquinol dosage was 100 mg with each of 3 meals daily for many months. On days I was going to be skiing or doing other sustained activity, I would double that.

Ubiquinol is the chemically reduced version of CoQ10, whereas the normally sold and used version of CoQ10 is the highly chemically stable oxidized version, ubiquinone. Drs. Peter and Per (father) Långsjøen, both cardiologists in TX, USA, worked with Kaneka Ltd in Japan to produce a chemically stable formulation of ubiquinol for their congestive heart failure patients that were so biomedically weakened that their bodies could not convert ubiquinone to ubiquinol, which is the chemical form actually used by human body. For me, no version of ubiquinone provided any detectable improvement to my physical performance, nor did low (100 mg 2X per day) dosages of ubiquinol.

What chemical version of CoQ10 works for you may depend on factors I can only speculate about. I had good reason to think that Lipitor had moved me to the brink of congestive heart failure, maybe into early stages, an assessment concurred with by cardiologist. Other statin victims seem to have been suffering more from mitochondric damage, to mention one of more obvious possibilities. I also suspect that those statin victims suffering most are those whose mitochondria were most damaged, not to mention damaged dolichol class of biochemicals (a very complex issue in its own right).

Finally, some batches of ubiquinol may have been "on the shelf" for long enough that a large fraction of it has been oxidized to ubiquinone (which is a bright orange colored powder).

Not a simple subject!!
Lars