On Sun, 05 May 2013 06:45:35 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

bm wrote:
"John Williamson" wrote in message
The reaction to statin doses doesn't seem to be linear, either, with a
noticeable threshold in my case, at least. Half the normal dose does
nothing, the full dose brings on all the side effects and no apparent
benefits, with every statin and Fibrate I've tried. I didn't dare try a
larger dose.

I can't say that I've noticed any side-effects, maybe I should quit for a
while and see.


Don't bother. Go with your doctor's recommendation as I did.

I'm a very rare case, apparently, my doctor said I was the first he'd
met who'd had *any* side effects. If you've not noticed any, then don't
worry, as 99+% of all patients don't suffer them.

They are a very effective medicine if you're on the right one for you,
and side effects, while possible, are rare.

Either there are quite a lot of these very rare cases or I live
amongst a statistical cluster. Every person I know, who takes statins,
has complained to me of their side-effects. Whether they only bother
to tell me they are on statins because they have the side effects, I
don't know but if they genuinely represent 1% then all the rest of my
friends must be on statins and I must have an awful lot of friends and
contacts I don't know about.

When my doctor wanted me to go on statins as a precautionary measure
(I didn't) I did a lot of research and came to the conclusion that, if
you have had a cardio-vascular "event" such as a heart attack or a
stroke then statins are enormously useful in reducing the possibility
of another one.

The problem for a normally-unhealthy person who hasn't had an event is
that not only are they at risk from heart attack etc but from liver
disease, kidney failure etc etc and nobody knows which one(s) are
going to strike and statins inevitably put additional strain on other
parts of the body. The meta-studies I read about suggested that there
was no overall decrease in morbidity amongst "normal" people who
hadn't yet had an event: it was just that they became ill from other
things instead.

Sorry for lack of references: it was several years ago when I looked
into this but I expect that a) it is all quite easy to find and b)
there are probably now even more studies which say completely the
opposite.

Nick