Reversing Statin Side Effects with Vitamin D

Researchers at the Cholesterol Center of the Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati studied 150 patients with high cholesterol who had two things in common:

1. They developed muscle pain after taking a cholesterol-lowering statin (a common side effect), and
2. They had low blood levels of vitamin D.

Researchers supplemented the patients with vitamin D (50,000 IU twice a week for 3 weeks, then 50,000 once a week for the next 7 months). After three weeks, they also put all of them back on a statin. The amazing result: 131 of the 150 people no longer had statin-caused muscle pain! And their vitamin D levels normalized. And their cholesterol went way down.

Coenzyme Q10 and the over-the-counter hormone supplement Pregnenolone can also help reverse muscle pain from taking a statin.

As I’ve written previously, statins may have an antiviral effect that helps people with fibromyalgia. So if you and your physician have decided it's best for you to be on a statin — to combat FMS, or to lower cholesterol — you now have another way to prevent statin-caused muscle pain.

References

"Symptomatic myositis-myalgia in hypercholesterolemic statin-treated patients with concurrent vitamin D deficiency leading to statin intolerance may reflect a reversible interaction between vitamin D deficiency and statins on skeletal muscle." Glueck CJ, Abuchaibe C, Wang P. Med Hypotheses. 2011 Jul 28. [Epub ahead of print]