Is it muscle, joint pain or just extreme tiredness?

[shadoww]

Hi, I'm new here and also fairly new to this muscle pain and/or aches and pains and general tiredness. Dr. has had me on Zocor for years then said it wasn't doing the job, and put me on Vytorin for a month or 2. Feet and legs started swelling badly and whole body hurts so she changes that to Lipitor. The past 3-4 mo. I've been so darned tired and all my muscles hurt to the point where all I want to do is just lay around. I had a heart echo and a venous/arterial doppler to check the cholesterol in my legs. They said there was some but not enough for P.A.D. or whatever they call it.

I'm also a borderline diabetic and take generic glucophage, and Fosamax for osteoporosis, although its just diagnosed at osteo-penia (sp?) I can't go on this way much longer, can someone give me some pointers where to turn next? It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

P.S. My daughter learned that my CoQ10 gets depleted with the statins and kept after me until we added that to our growing list of vitamins and supplements. So I take about 400 mgs a day. Half in morning, half at dinnertime.

[Darrell]

Ask you doctor if you can phase off the Lipitor for a few weeks as an experiment. When I stopped Zocor, I experienced significant relief from muscle weakness and fatigue problems in the first few days.

[shadoww]

[quote="Darrell"]Ask you doctor if you can phase off the Lipitor for a few weeks as an experiment. When I stopped Zocor, I experienced significant relief from muscle weakness and fatigue problems in the first few days.[/quote]

thanks Darrell for the prompt reply. My cardiac dr. said to stop the Tricor, (forgot to mention that one) for a few days and if that doestn do it, to go off the Lipitor. So I started cutting them in half 3 nights ago. Am planning to go totally off them but just don't know how long to wait before I completely stop.

[garlicprincess]

Hi Shadoww

Welcome! The link below is for the "Stopping Statins" page on spacedoc.net; hope it helps.

http://www.spacedoc.net/stopping_statins.html

My physician had me stop cold turkey (zocor and zetia after 10 years on zocor and almost 2 years on zetia) - my muscle pain and weakness was horrific and I believe misdiagnosed as many other things. Remarkably, a few days after I was told to discontinue the zocor and zetia, I found spacedoc.net --- and learned about CoQ10. Within a few days of starting the CoQ10, my muscle and joint pain decreased dramatically. I would have "weaned off" had I found spacedoc.net before stopping both drugs cold.

I too experience some foot and leg swelling (left more than right) and wonder if that is also statin related!

I am still fighting weakness and dizzy spells, but feel like I am making progress. Some days are better than others. I hope you will find progress and start to feel better.

Best,
Sarah

[shadoww]

[quote="garlicprincess"]Hi Shadoww

Welcome! The link below is for the "Stopping Statins" page on spacedoc.net; hope it helps.

http://www.spacedoc.net/stopping_statins.html

My physician had me stop cold turkey (zocor and zetia after 10 years on zocor and almost 2 years on zetia) - my muscle pain and weakness was horrific and I believe misdiagnosed as many other things. Remarkably, a few days after I was told to discontinue the zocor and zetia, I found spacedoc.net --- and learned about CoQ10. Within a few days of starting the CoQ10, my muscle and joint pain decreased dramatically. I would have "weaned off" had I found spacedoc.net before stopping both drugs cold.

I too experience some foot and leg swelling (left more than right) and wonder if that is also statin related!

I am still fighting weakness and dizzy spells, but feel like I am making progress. Some days are better than others. I hope you will find progress and start to feel better.

Best,
Sarah[/quote]

thanks for the welcome. Today is actually one of my "better" days actually. But most days I feel like I can barely walk from one end of the house to the other. My left foot/ankle also is worse than my right. Still don't know why they swell guess its a by product of the whole process.

I've had 3 nites of half doses of Lipitor and I'm ready to just go it cold turkey. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. If that makes any sense. Glad I found you guys too, now I know where to come to, to complain. LOL

[Darrell]

I'm no doctor or physiologist, but my theory on the swelling is that the little muscles in the vein valves are weakened and thus the vein valves are not working properly and the blood pools in the lower extremities. Before using L-Carnitine, I found that wearing medical-type support stockings helped to avoid much of the ache. It didn't do anything for the weakness though. I wore those stockings daily for five months until I started L-Carnitine -- then I didn't need them anymore.

[Darrell]

Sorry, but on further investigation I learned that it is not muscles in the vein valves but rather the calf muscles themselves that may be causing blood pooling and swelling. The calf muscles provide the driving force for moving the blood through the deep veins up and out of the legs.
ww.venous-info.com/handbook/hbkIndex.html

[garlicprincess]

Darrell

Thanks for posting the link so that we can read up on leg swelling/veins; never quite understood the process of why, just know that it started at the same time the Zocor did. Also appreciate you sharing the tip regarding the support hose and also the L-Carnitine. Planning on checking into both.

Maybe spinach will help cure my weakness - it helped Popeye!

Sarah

[Darrell]

Spinach can't hurt, but it was actually Olive Oil that kept him going.