Well, if you take people who claim to have statin-related muscle pain, and randomize them back and forth between statins and an identical-looking placebo in three-week blocks, they can’t actually tell whether they’re getting the real drug or the sugar pill. What kind of data has doctors suggesting that patients are falsely misattributing normal aches and pains to be statin side effects? Statins have developed a bad reputation with the public, one editorial read, “a phenomenon driven largely by proliferation on the Internet of bizarre and unscientific … criticisms of these drugs.” Maybe it’s Googling that leads to statin intolerance? But come on, people have been going off statins for decades before there even was an Internet. Wait meaning maybe it’s mostly just in people’s heads? But there is evidently growing evidence that statin intolerance is predominantly psychosocial, not pharmacological. Normally, side-effect symptoms go away when you stop the drug, but sometimes can linger a year or more. Taking coenzyme Q10 supplements as a treatment for statin-associated muscle symptoms was a good idea in theory, but they don’t actually appear to help. By far the most prevalent and important adverse events, up to 72 percent of all statin side effects are statin-associated muscle symptoms. When asked why, most former statin users, or discontinuers, cited muscle pain, a side effect, as the primary reason for stopping the pills. Three-quarters may flat out stop taking them, or sometimes up to nearly 90 percent discontinue treatment. So, why is adherence to cholesterol-lowering statin drug therapy such a major challenge? The majority of studies reported at least 40 percent, and as much as 80 percent, of patients did not comply fully with statin treatment recommendations. There is now overwhelming evidence to support reducing LDL cholesterol-bad cholesterol-to reduce atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, the number one killer of men and women.
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