It turns out to be Zocor. He used to be on Lipitor, but the insurance covers Zocor more.
My drug reference guide (Tarascon Pharmacopoeia) says to avoid drinking over 1 quart of grapefruit juice per day when on Crestor to avoid increased risk of muscle pain. (IANAD/N, discuss specific issues with your own physician, blah blah.)
I started taking Lipitor about a year ago. When my doctor started me on it, he specifically mentioned the “muscle inflammation” side effect. In fact, I remember his depiction of it being significantly worse than simply inflammation, he made it sound more like the muscles would actually be starting to break down, plus nerve damage, the whole nine yards. He said, “It’s a very rare side effect, but if you start feeling muscle pain all over your body, call the office immediately. And if anyone tries to blow you off, tell them you are on Lipitor and you want to see the doctor NOW!” I’ve never had any trouble with the Lipitor, but jeez that little speech scared the bejeebers out of me.
Well I had elevated liver enzymes to begin with, maybe that is why I am on such a low dose of Lipitor. Hmmm. I had better ask him about that.
i have been taking a 40 mg lipitor daily for three years with no side effects. i was unawre of the grapefruit complication, but since i do not like grapefruit, it doesn’t matter.
my cholesterol level went from 240 to 149
My mom had to get off Lipitor when the painful leg cramps had her up all night crying.
She’s too scared to try any of the alternatives now, which is unfortunate because her cholesterol is quite high and the family has a history of atherosclerosis. 
I know plenty of others who are using Lipitor and other cholesterol drugs without any side effects, though, so that just goes to show you that all the anecdotes in the world can’t tell you how it’ll affect you. Good luck, and I hope it goes smoothly for you.
No side effects whatever from Lipitor.
Stranger still (IMHO), I kicked Celebrex with hardly a murmur.
Oh, I wake up aching a little, and sometimes make a mental note to take a couple of Tylenol, after I put on the coffee. But I putz around a little, the pain ebbs and I literally forget about the Tylenol.
Do you already have heart disease? Statins have very little preventative effect in people who do not already have heart disease. High cholesterol and heart disease are not the same thing.
This thread is from 2005 and the OP hasn’t posted in a couple of years - I’m guessing he doesn’t need any more input, but I could be wrong.
Thanks, I missed that.
A few years ago I had a heart attack and a stent placed in a coronary artery. My lipid profile blood work was very normal. Still, my doctor suggested a statin for one year, as the data showed increased survival for that year regardless of numbers.
I had horrible muscle cramps. Nearly every night I’d wake up with a leg cramp, have to jump out of bed and walk around. It was awful.
After a year of leg cramps I stopped taking Lipitor. In the two years since stopping the drug I’ve had one or two leg cramps.
Moderator Note
This thread was revived by a spammer who has since been wished away to the cornfield.
Obligatory IANAD statement.
Just as an update to the grapefruit/statins issue - the advice now is, as with nearly everything else, moderation is the key:
A glass of juice per day, on some statins, would be pushing it but a little on occasion seems fine.
While we’re talking about statins; is there a consensus about the value of CoQ10 supplementation for people taking them? I started taking a 300 mg CoQ10 capsule around 10 weeks ago with the advice of my primary care physician. I don’t know if I’ve seen a real benefit, but most of the data I’ve seen indicate it takes a while to build up enough to make a difference. The Kirkland 300 mg CoQ10 costs $15.99 for 100 capsules, so five bucks a month is pretty cheap. I bought a six month supply and figured I’d assess the situation after that.
In a somewhat recent thread about Lipitor and other statin drugs, it was mentioned that one of the side effects was patchy hair loss. When I read that, I realized that a couple of bare spots behind my temples appeared a little while after I started taking Lipitor. I was also very stiff and unable to bend easily for a year or so back then.
I’ve been on Lipitor (Atorvastatin) since 2007. I’m on other meds too, but the Lipitor has given me no issues that I could attribute to the drug.
The stuff works well.
Oh, are we still contributing, even now that it’s been outed as a zombie thread?
Lipitor here, for a couple of decades. It keeps my cholesterol in the low 200s which is pretty darn good considering where it was. It’s considerably lower when my weight is nearly under control.
I retired a few years ago at 55. Primarily because I was able to, but also because I felt that my memory for details (particularly retaining details of new information) wasn’t what it used to be. It could just be because I was in my 50s but I also recall that being a side effect of atorvastatin.
Is it true that taking statins only increases one’s lifespan by at most few months? I have read articles that claim that taking it for five years gains you less than 2 “extra” weeks of life, and if you take them 30 years you live on average 3 months longer than if you didn’t bother with them.
I’ve been on Atorvastatin for six months since my heart attack, and have had no side effects that I’ve noticed.
Yeah, but those numbers are based on averages. If 100 people without existing heart disease take them for five years there may be 99 who aren’t helped at all, but one person might not drop dead from a heart attack.
If you’re one of the 99 you get no benefit at all, but if you’re the one who would have died, awesome for you. It’s not 100 people getting two weeks, it’s 99 people getting nothing and one person getting four years.
You need to look up the “number needed to treat” statistic.