Anyone have muscle weakness and pain after stopping Lipitor?

[Ewsw24]

I only took Lipitor for a month, but a month later I am having severve muscle pain. I used to run 3x a week and now it hurts to walk. My doc only said I have a vit d deficiency. Thoughts?

[sandybrown]

Two options:

1. Take blood tests for check Vit D.

2. Ask you GP, if you could try another brand of statin or any other cholesterol lowering medication. If you can please post your cholesterol blood test lipid numbers. did your GP do any risk analysis or offer life style change.

[sos007 Ambassador]

There are many factors that can affect your health. Generally speaking, statins like Lipitor can cause muscle deterioration that trigger pain. Stopping statins usually alleviates this pain which was my personal experience.

An unbalanced diet, over-training, lack of sleep, and dehydration can all play a role in muscle pain.

Consider seeing a naturopath who can review your diet and lifestyle habits and perhaps provide some suggestions.

If you have evidence of cardiovascular disease it is best to address the source of the problem rather than covering up the symptoms with pharmaceuticals.

The Mediterranean Diet coupled with moderate daily exercise and a full night's sleep, should, in time, improve your health.

Good luck.

[G1g1]

That is unfortunate. When my frozen shoulder started everyone said, "Oh, you're just getting old. Everyone gets aches and pains when they get old." If taking lipitor is the only option to control your medical condition, ask your GP for a milder substitute first. Try any of the milder statins. Next, get an Orthopedist. Tell him you have "adhesion capsulitis". Ask him for no surgery, but PT (physical therapy). They stretched and pulled, stretched and pulled. At first it felt like I was taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Then I paired my PT with a Chiropractor who used cupping. Wow! Did that hurt! But 3 treatments later, a couple of deep tissue massages, and continued PT. My pain is now "managible". Whenever I feel an inkling of stiffness and pain, I start stretching how the PT's showed me. When I asked my doctor about taking me off of lipitor, he said "it's either lose a limb or lose your life." (Nice, huh?) So ultimately your most important goal is to take care of your medical condition to get you off of the medication; permanently.

I have low vitamin D, too. My whole family has low vitamin D. (Bizarre.) But when I pressed my doctor how much I need to take. None of them had an answer. Then 6 months later I asked again, the doctor says 200-500 iu's/day is enough to raise your vitamin D. So being the over achiever that I am, I take 1000 iu/day. Also, a nice "healthy" NATURAL tan is nature's way of getting vitamin D. I don't know if lack of vitamin D is synonymous with high cholesterol or a reaction to lipitor.

Oh, another late discovery, what I didn't realize was you can not eat grapefruit (or certain foods) when on lipitor or certain statins. It's what set of the frozen shoulder in the first place.

Hope this helps.