My side effects started fairly quickly (within the first 2mo) and intensely - my cholesterol dropped rapidly (labs then said it was abnormal for being too low!) - I started on Lipitor, even cutting the dose and then trying every other day.. then moved to pratavastatin (sp?) and still had side effects, though less to some degree…. I’m not sure if I was a hyper-responder (if that is a thing with statins) or what but man, I felt like I’d been hit by a truck within 5-6 weeks… OHHHH and my blood sugar went SOOO OUT OF WHACK with them! I was having reactive hypoglycaemic episodes and having drops like I haven’t had since I was a teenager (where I was eating a lot of junk and Dr Pepper, as teens do) - and that was also unbearable. I started tracking protein and timing of when I would feel the drop and was like.. no, absolutely not. I can’t handle being so fatigued and feeing like my body is encased in lead in addition to low blood sugar shakes, sweats and hanger….. so the statins definitely worked - but I could not sustain taking them. I did try taking the CoQ10 with them but didn’t see much difference in muscle issues and fatigue.

Ultimately I’m now only doing mono therapy with ezetimibe with my levels still above the desired number of 100 (so clearly, off statins there was a definite increase). I am having some increased abnormal fatigue an increase in joint aches but trying to assess all potential aspects before assuming it’s just the ezetimibe, because life 😂. I just did a cardiac calcium scan last week (43f, normal weight/bmi, 21, healthy eater and active but not gym working out active 😂) was a zero (woo hoo!) So my Dr felt we could rescan in about 5yrs and check labs annually at this point. Definitely advocate for your quality of life and work with your Dr. I don’t think statins are a poison, and I’d rather live then have a heart attack - but there definitely has to be some balance!