Vytorin Side Effects

[Darlene Talbert]

I am a 49 year old female who has been taking Vytorin for approximately 6 months. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia 10 years ago but I have never felt muscle pain as severe as what I have been experiencing lately. I have literally been in tears and moaning from the excruciating muscle pain. I called my pharmacy to see if they could look to see if I was taking anything that would cause such a sever side effect and the pharmacist told me she thought it was the Vytorin. So I stopped taking it since my last lab results showed my cholesterol to be at an excellent level. I still had muscle pain for the next few days, decreasing a little more each day. It has been about 7 days since I stopped taking it and thought that the muscle pain was over but today it is at an excruciating level again and I feel muscles twitching all over my body. I have been under a great deal of stress and don't know if this could be related. I have taken two 500 mg Vicodin for the pain and it has done little to relieve my pain. I take Vicodin usually once a day when I get up in the morning. I fractured L-5 in 1999 and for some reason pain in that area has returned. I need to ask if Vytorin could still be causing this muscle pain even though I have not taken it for over a week? The pain is almost unbearable.

[canarie]

Greetings,

Since I have just joined the group, I realize I may be less than timely in addressing issues of your October post, but in case you've still not found relief, I wanted to share the following as I address both your earlier situation and the latter, after use of Vytorin:

Although I have never used statins, I have found that increasing the daily intake of Magnesium (500-1000 mg) can be helpful for sake of 'relaxing' one's muscles. (Especially if there is high stress with heart palps and/or those twitches you mention.) Fascinatingly, this one mineral is involved in over 300 important body functions and yet many of us are deficient in it, partially due to inferior soil quality and subsequent end-products of a nutrient-deficient food chain. No harm in trying either, since this is an essential mineral that among other activities, serves to provide a counter-balance to calcium as it initiates the relaxation element in opposition to calcium's contraction for one's better heart functioning and stability.

Secondly, I'm so sorry to hear of your years of suffering with Fibromyalgia as I too, have dealt with nasty effects of CFS which does have similar aspects like trigger/pressure points. However, a huge turning point for me was when I added-in 200 mg of daily CoQ10 (Ubiquinone) which acts as an energy inducer and major anti-oxidant for the heart, liver and kidneys. We naturally make CoQ10, but as we age it gets depleted and yet this nutrient is essential for creating the end-product of ADP (cellular energy) from mitochondria in each cell of our body. And as you know from reading Dr. Graveline, CoQ10 does get grossly depleted when taking a statin if one doesn't also supplement with it. At my lowest point with the CFS, I 'crackled' when I walked due to slowed metabolism that caused build-up of lactic acid in joints, plus my chest/heart felt like a tank was sitting on it...yet, from the first day of taking this higher dose CoQ10, there were "amazing" improvements relative to formerly dibilitating symptoms of fatigue, lack of physical strength, muscle pain, brain fog, etc. and of course, I'm still using it.

Thirdly, thanks to a 20 minute mechanical massage (on my back) about every third day, I found substantial trigger point relief as such topical vibration was able to smooth-out tension/tightness in those locations, although, at first you must allow what's called "exquisite pain" as that myofascia tissue is releasing...and then, everything else in those sessions feels relaxingly soothing.

Unfortunately, I too, must surmise that Vytorin has been instrumental in not only depleting your CoQ10 levels, but so has it served to exacerbate the pain you already had. And even as a lay person, I do suspect that the primary reason even heavy-duty Vicodin can't touch this chemically-induced pain is because it's likely related to a deficiency of targeted (natural) nutrients that your body desperately needs so as to support a more normal (pain-free) process of biological functioning.

However, perhaps you feel better by now and if so, I am glad for you! But if not, please know the reason I serendipitously found this site today was because of what's occurred with some painful musculature effects on my Dad's 89 year old wife after she refused a statin and was prescribed just one of the ingredients in Vytorin, Zetia. In her case, symptoms started with dizziness and then progressed to 'sudden' hip pain when she'd try to arise from a chair. So, after confirming it was the right thing to do in stopping that (less than a month's use), I also asked her to start using 800 IU of Vitamin D (another deficient vitamin, especially in women so as to support stronger bone calcium and avoid Osteoporosis) and I have been encouraged to hear that, in less than a week, she has had some improvement (as it now seems that Zetia served to reveal a Vit. D deficiency). But the point is, even when this one drug is added to the Zocor statin to create a more powerful Vytorin, there can be ill-effects. And obviously, for some...it may create a double-whammy!

Lastly, when it comes to managing healthier cholesterol levels, it is with a woman of this advanced age and numbers of total cholesterol at 230 & HDL at 61 that I don't think they're concerning as (even) Dr. Graveline speaks to how cholesterol levels should not be as low in the elderly and yet, since she's been influenced to think that she needs to use something, I have suggested that she try Policosanol and/or Red Yeast Rice (used in Asia successfully for centuries!) as both have been determined by research to work like a safer statin, albeit not as quickly since these are naturally derived from plant formulations.

Thanks for your time in reading this as I have wanted to offer you HOPE with a few feasible suggestions and if you knew me, simply 'had' to tell the story behind each one. Again, I do hope you're feeling much better.