I have underactive thyroid for 3yrs exercised every day healthy and not overweight
Was invited by gp for health screen went in a hero within 6 weeks zero!
Was told my meds were to be reduced from 100mgs to 75mgs ( at least every 6 months the dosage goes up or down between 50mgs - 100mgs) and I had to take statins as I had high cholestral and at risk of heart attack!
I asked doctor could my thyroid dosage be causing this and I dont want statins..he insisted I took them, I agreed but only for 3 months...after 6 weeks I stopped taking them and 6 werks on I still feel 90! I have spent the last 6 weeks unable to exercise been paying for sports therapist, chiropractor and accupunture swollen joints and muscle pain all over legs feel 1st each cold to touch from knee upwards to buttocks and lower back pain really bad thankfully all the treatments are helping but legs are still really painful and all therapists have said its like my muscles and joints have been effected by the statins!
I have had more bloodtests and have to go back for appointment re high cholestral again! Should statins be taken with underactive thyroid?
Who is sponsoring the health checks a pharmecuital company?
Are the GPs on commission ?
They dont seem to be interested in anything else but want to give statins!
I was fit and healthy before I took them!
Has anyone else around 55yrs experienced statins?
Sorry for rant but Im missing out on so much due to muscle and joint pain for my upcoming skiing holiday I have no chance my legs feel like lead dont feel cold but are like stone to touch!
Im walking 1/2 hr twice a day as thats all I can do now
Any help greatly appriciated
Thank you
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Ange2304
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Ange2304 would be really helpful if you could post your blood test results, not least for members to try and understand why your Thyroxine is being reduced. Please remember you do have a choice of whether to take a medication and your GP should be aware that inadequately managed hypothyroidism can cause high cholesterol.
You are correct, GPs/surgery are financially rewarded for prescribing statins (See Dept of Health website, QoF points). If you want to read more on this then check out Dr Kendrick, a Scottish GP who blogs:
Ange2304 Do some research on statins and cholesterol levels especially in women. There is research that indicates they are completely useless.
The health checks are actually mandated by the government for any one 40+ to check for diabetes and indicators of CVD. Unfortunately the checks for cholesterol levels which the NHS thinks are an indicator of CVD, only use total cholesterol. Total cholesterol is a completely useless measure for determining if you actually have an issue with cholesterol unless you result around 10+ .
Other conditions can cause cholesterol levels to be higher than the 5.2 or 5.4 include badly medicated hypothyroidism where TSH isn't kept under 1 with free T4 and free T3 in top part of the range, taking vitamin D supplements, eating a very high carbohydrate diet as mandated by the government sponsored by food companies as being a healthy diet, and then there is your genetics. Some people no matter what they do will have a total cholesterol over the range due to their genetics however if their triglycerides are low and their HDL is high then on the measure the government uses then they aren't at risk of CVD.
Also putting someone on drugs who had a risk of CVD without getting them to modify their life style in terms of diet and exercise is a waste of time as they will end up needing more drugs. Added to that statins can make you more prone to get type 2 diabetes plus has other side effects like muscle pain. In your case putting you on statins and decreasing your thyroid hormone likely caused your problems.
You are better of:
1. Stopping the statins like you have done , and
2. Posting your thyroid blood test results with their ranges on here in a new thread, and,
3. Getting advice from the lovely posters on here about whether you need further tests - which you may have to do privately -, plus need to take supplements and modify your diet in a particular way.
Good post, a bit concerned that you state that Vit D supplements can cause cholesterol levels to be higher. I had low vitamin D levels and I also have Pernicious anemia as well as hypothyroid to contend with. When my vit D was low I had terrible joint pains. What is the connection between vit D and raised cholesterol. I've just had one of those helath checks and I have a telephone appointment with the Dr tomorrow who I guess might try to recommend I take statins I'm 52 and been hypothyroid for 16 years. I am on 75mcg and my latest TSH was 2.9 (24 hours after taking meds) which is stated as normal.
If you are thyroid hormone replacement a TSH over 1 is too high. Have a look at the main thyroiduk.org.uk to understand how the thyroid works. In short if you are taking replacement thyroid hormones then your feed loop doesn't work in exactly the same way as someone who is euthyroid. (There is a paper you maybe able to get from thyroiduk about optimal levels of thyroid hormones.)
In regards to cholesterol I suggest you do your own research. There are now plenty of scientists and doctors including British ones who are specialists, who are think statins are a con. If you look them up* - someone has mentioned one of them below - you will find that they think cholesterol levels have nothing to do with CVD risk and the Framingham study also shows other markers that in combination show a better indication of the risk of CVD that are being ignored. More controversial is the lead doctor advocating giving everyone statins has consistently refused to allow other scientists to look at the raw data of his research.
In regards to challenging your GP you don't - you simply say I researched the advantages and disadvantages of statins and don't want them.
* Other names I can think of are Dr Zoe Harcombe Phd, and Dr Aseem Malhotra who is a cardiologist. All the 3 names mentioned have websites and do conference/TV talks which you can find on YouTube.
I think BLuBug misspoke. Vitamin D is necessary for your health. When you don’t get enough, you have a deficiency. This can lead to brittle bones, as well as rickets in children. Some research has even tied it to depression, high blood pressure, cancer, type 2 diabetes, asthma, and high cholesterol.
There is conflicting information when it comes to the link between cholesterol and vitamin D. Population studies show that people with lower vitamin D levels are more likely to have high cholesterol, although this does not prove a “cause and effect” relationship.
One 2012 study found that vitamin D supplements have no cholesterol-lowering effects, at least in the short term. In fact, the researchers found that the supplements were actually associated with an increase in LDL.
However, 2014 research found that taking calcium and vitamin D supplements together improved cholesterol levels in postmenopausal overweight or obese women.
The verdict, according to the National Institutes of Health, is that there is insufficient evidence to determine any relationship between your vitamin D intake and your cholesterol levels. But with the host of benefits that vitamin D provides to those that use it, there is still no deterrent in using vitamin D as part of your healthy lifestyle.
In the very old days, patients with high cholesterol were presented with thyroid replacement as treatment. Nowadays, statin comes along with the threat that if you don't take it you are likely to have a heart attack.
Once statin enters the body, it almost takes over and the patients embark on a new journey jumping from one illness to another. In the interim, you are likely to put up with numerous and nasty side effects.
80% of Cholesterol is made in the body and for a reason.
Cholesterol is critical to brain health and function. The body makes it as a means to compensate for the lack of it and to protect the body at the cellular levels in the presence of high levels of inflammation.
Pregnenolone, the mother of all hormones, is made of pure cholesterol and the chain follows within its pathways to make other essential hormones such as DHEA, cortisol estrogen, testosterone, progesterone etc.
With Hypothyroidism, the body lacks the ability to metabolise and to utilise cholesterol effectively. As a result, the circulating storage shows high in the blood. Furthermore, some of the tests within the lipid profile are calculated rather than measured.
Your levels will drop once you are at optimal doses of thyroid replacement, in other words, when you reach optimal levels of T3.
Hi, I get a newsletter from Dr Malcolm Kendrick. He wrote a book called The Great Cholsterol Con. If his book is anything like his newsletters then statins are very very bad and nearly no one should take them! Cholesterol is very important and has been blamed for doing harm when the body and brain need it. Apparently it's also misread by nearly all GP's and once I found out that people with low cholesterol suffer death from all cause mortality I stopped worrying that mine was just over 5 and told my dr my cholesterol levels were the least of my worries! I'm going to guess that eating high cholesterol foods, say on an Ancestral type eating regime and giving your body time will hopefully repair the damage done?
Statins are know known to be bad for us. There are three different types of statins that can also cross the blood brain barrier which is very bad.
One thing that statins do is to deplete the body of Co-Q10. You might overcome your statin side effects more quickly by buying some Co-Q10 supplements and taking quite a high dose, say 100mg, twice a day.
Co-Q10 is also known as ubiquinone. In the body, this is converted into uniquinol, which is a more active form which can be absorbed more easily. Ubiquinol can be supplemented instead of Co-Q10.
I wouldn't take statins as there is no medical evidence that they decrease the chance of death (especially not for women), in fact they increase calcification of the arteries (and risk of dementia). High cholesterol is linked to undermedication for thyroid disorders - BUT - statistically older women live longer with higher cholesterol (so do men, but it is not as marked). Statins can also increase muscle and joint pain. I think you need to see a different doctor.
Does anyone take plant sterols to reduce their cholesterol?. If so what do you take and have you had any success? I would prefer to try and reduce my cholesterol naturally, losing weight isn't much of an option for me as I find it impossible with hypo to lose weight.
We recently started getting Benecol margerine due to my husband being diagnosed with high cholesterol. Have a look at their website. Also trying to eat a lower fat diet. He took statins and got bad muscle pains so stopped them. He spoke to his GP and is going to get tested again after trying the dietary route.
If you have hypothyroidism and high cholesterol you are on insufficient thyroid hormones as higher cholesterol is one of the most common symptoms in hypothyroidism. It reduces when thyroid hormones are optimal for patient, i.e. no clinical symptoms and feel well.
Hi Ange2304. These dangerous Statins led to my late Mum's diabettes worsening, leading to terrible deep leg ulcers, then onto having Kidney failure and on dialysis for the rest of her life. Kidney failure and pre diabettes and diabettes are known to be brought on by taking statins. Women over menopausal age have a 77% chance of having pre/diabettes if taking a statin (apparently.)
Statins caused dementia in 3 people we know, once off the statin they returned back to normal. Two others on statins we warned to be careful, one then shortly had a heart attack, the other a stroke, we were not surprised, just saddened.
Doctor prescribed statins for my husband's high cholesterol of 8, despite him already having muscle weakness, (muscle weakness is a common symptom of taking a statin,) he did not take the statins as we knew statin's for high cholesterol is a big con to make money and that cholesterol is not the enemy.
I have read many times that Heart Doctors themselves are now reporting that patients with low or normal cholesterol are more at risk for heart disease, not those who have high cholesterol. Our brains and bodies need cholesterol, its connected to help making vitamin D in our body, also our sex hormones and other hormones rely on cholesterol, so why would we need to lower our natural cholesterol levels. ???
My husband was on these utterly useless statins (Simvastatin) for years and they gave him Type 2 Diabetes! Thankfully, he is able to treat it by diet alone... I wouldn't touch statins with a bargepole and neither would he now!
Hi. One thing I don't understand is why doctors tend to make such big changes in doses of Thyroxine. I make small changes (e.g. take 100mg four times a week and 75mg three times a week, for example. I add up the total weekly dose then divide by 7 to calculate an average daily dose (you can do this with T4 as it takes time to be absorbed and build up. I also take a small daily does of 5mg of T3, because I cannot tolerate this very well but need some as I seem to be poor at converting T4.) I then arrange a private blood test after about 6-8 weeks with Blue Horizon. I do the self- test pin prick and test free T4, Free T3 and TSH.
Obviously it depends on what your results are and why the Dr wants to reduce your T4, which I suspect is to do with TSH.
I find that by making a small dose change I can effect the TSH measure to bring it just into the lower range. This suits me as I have had heart arrhythmia and also have osteopenia, so I don't want my TSH suppressed too much, but other people have different views and approaches.
You have just been taken to the cleaners! It is no secret that a high thyroid level (FT3 & FT4 well within their ranges) improves lipid metabolism. I have observed this personally. Moreover, it is no secret that statins have many side-effects, some of them dangerous. For instance, I have a friend on statins who has experienced muscle discomfort and dysfunction. I is also no secret that "natural" health-care providers insist that people on statins take CoQ10, because statins reduce the body's production of CoQ10. The widespread use of statins is one of the results of BigPharma patent-drug greed. My advice: find a doctor who will tailor your FT3 & FT4 well up into their ranges; I am 90% certain this will provide you a much better result than the statin you have been taking.
Hi, I was put on statins only 4 weeks ago and stopped taking them, I was starting to feel so much better when I was put on t3 after feeling unwell for a long time, as soon as I starting taking the statins I felt really unwell again, it does make me wonder wether they were having a reaction to the thyroid tabs, alot of people advised me not to take them but I have a blockage in my leg so really ineed to find out if there is another alternative, I also take aspirin.
If not on warfarin or any other blood thinner, you can take vit K2. This allows the blood to clot naturally if unwanted bleeding is taking place, but it never causes thrombosis clots, in fact it prevents such clots from forminhg. Look up on web - cheers, Maje
I had high cholesterol a few years back, & was pressured into taking a statin. After 3 months of taking them, I could hardly walk because of tiredness & muscle aches, plus every time I ate anything I`d fall asleep. Iv`e since managed to bring my choleserol down to 5.7 with intermittent fasting.
Another very poorly trained doctor who knows no clinical symptoms and ignores them when patients complain. Tick off the ones you have and you shouldn't if optimally prescribed.
I took self off statins on the advice of a young optician who I saw because I was having lots of visual problems. He asked me if I was on statins and if I got muscle pain in my legs. I did. I am off them but have some ongoing issues with my brain and muscle pain. Am going to try the Co10 recommended on here. And my visual problems have completely gone. Evil drug in my opinion!
and look in the banner at the head of the page you'll see a reference to Statin Drugs. Click on that and you'll find entries on side effects of statins, myths about cholesterol and statins, and articles galore.
.
Before rushing off and buying Co-Q10, please check that they are suitable for you and don't interact with anything you take already :
According to the wikipedia page on Co-Q10 it can interfere with warfarin :
"Coenzyme Q10 has potential to inhibit the effects of warfarin (Coumadin), a potent anticoagulant, by reducing the INR, a measure of blood clotting. The structure of coenzyme Q10 is very much similar to the structure of vitamin K, which competes with and counteracts warfarin's anticoagulation effects. Coenzyme Q10 should be avoided in patients currently taking warfarin due to the increased risk of clotting.[15]"
Thanks very much for that. Am not on Warfarin. Not sure whether to get co10 now. Very I'll and tired at moment and very fed up. About to go for bloods after inc feritin folate D and b12 one sentence in link you shared said statins make people old in blink of eye. Yes that is true for me!
Ferritin, folate, D and B12 not being optimal really make a massive difference.
Also test results of D at18 came back as normal from the lab but the reference ranges said under 75 was insufficient. When I mentioned this to my doc she put me on massive doses of vit D which really helped when taken withal mk7.
I resisted giving up wheat for years, but have now, and everything is working so much better.
Is your total cholesterol high because the triglycerides are very high? In overt hyperthyroidism LDL and HDL are usually decreased whereas triglycerides levels are over the roof.
Few months after I had my Thyroid removed (cancer) my cholesterol and LDL went up 35 points and not my family doctor or my Endo said one thing about me being Hypo inspite of bei g on synthroid/t3 (125 and 5mcg t3)
I have been prescribed statins and after a month started getting symptoms couldn't lift my arms over my head more aches and pains restless legs even worse fatigue and blood test showing signs of future Diabetes. Went to doctor said to come off station for a month. Read side effects when I got home all related to staying. Not gone back on any station yet but doctor wants me to.
Statins deplete the body of CoQ10 which can and does lead to heart valve problems. A workman at my house told me four members of his family were put on statins in succession and in succession all four developed heart problems. They also block the body's absorption of Vit D3 which affects the bones. If you feel you must take them, take these two items with them and check on internet regularly for any updates. Better still, drop them like hotcakes - seriously not necessary to take these, but Doc's are paid to promote them. No end of friends have tried them and come off them. Vit B6 essential for normal working of thyroid try 50mgs daily for a while, (Up to 200mgs safe but not advisable without Doc check.) Take with 500mgs magnesium & 15mgs zinc. Half a teaspoon of Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) is equal to 500 mgs of magnesium Also thyroid only works with 5% efficiency if vit E is deficient. Do NOT take vit E if on warfarin or similar, if you have a rheumatoid heart condition (you and your Doc would know if the case) and start very low (50mgs) dose if the blood pressure is high. Brilliant for any other heart problems. Cholesterol can be lowered by Lecigran from Holland and Barratt etc, or by taking plenty of garlic, and especially by loads of walking excercise. If taking iodine always take with vit A to prevent it sliding into a fast thyroid. (A slow thyroid always precedes a fast thyroid.) Hope this helps, cheers, Maje
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Cholesterol, Hypothyroidism, Statins
CHOLESTEROL AND STATINS
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