“Getting Around Statins” – Part 1

Friends:

As we know, doctors often and routinely prescribe statins for people with high cholesterol to lower their total and LDL cholesterol and reduce their heart attack or stroke risk.

While statins are highly effective and safe for most people and can be lifesaving, they have also been linked to muscle pain, digestive problems, and mental fuzziness in some people who take them and even may rarely cause liver damage.

Understanding statins is far from “done science”–more and more is being learned constantly.

Statins include atorvastatin (Lipitor), fluvastatin (Lescol XL), lovastatin (Altoprev), pitavastatin (Livalo), pravastatin (Pravachol), rosuvastatin (Crestor, Ezallor) and simvastatin (Zocor, FloLipid).
Two components constitute the chemical structure of statins; the pharmacophore, which is a dihydroxyheptanoic acid segment, and its moiety, composed of a ring system with diverse substituents.

Though there are pharmaceutical forms of statins, nature also provides statins that can behave in the same manner as from such botanicals as red rice yeast and mushrooms.

I will talk more about this in Part 3. However, the bottom line, having too much cholesterol in your blood lurking about increases your risk of heart attacks and strokes–but more to it than just the level of these lipids.

As LDL is absorbed into the arterial wall endothelium, the danger is that it becomes “oxidized” and attracts the immune system to treat it as a foreign invading substance.

When this happens, there is inflammation and the formation of “foam cells,”–the precursor to arterial wall damage, eventual calcification, and plaque formation.

So the current medical philosophy and practice do not, unfortunately, strongly consider the autooxidation of LDL and which form of LDL is the highest risk factor for autooxidation.

Instead, the conventional practice looks much more to cholesterol lowering by the statins, which block a substance, an enzyme, your liver needs to make cholesterol along with dietary recommendations and exercise–both of the last two mentions are without question and very important in any and all considerations.

However, the blocking of the enzyme HMG- appears to have effects on other tissues–some profound, some minor, and with many people, none at all.
The blocking of the metabolic pathway, wherever from synthetic or natural-based statins, such as from “red yeast,” can manifest symptoms similarly as noted earlier.
Since statins can block to some degree the formation of the sterol lipid, statins may also lower levels of other cholesterol-based sterols such as testosterone, estrogen, and other androgens that have important functions in male and female health.
From the research article: Basic to Translational Science Aug 19, 2019:

“…statins can cause spontaneous and irregular leaks of calcium from storage compartments within muscle cells. Under normal conditions, coordinated calcium releases from these stores make the muscles contract.
Unregulated calcium leaks may cause damage to muscle cells, potentially leading to muscle pain and weakness”.
The researchers suggest muscle cells can tolerate this calcium leak in most people. However, in people already susceptible due to their genes or lifestyle, the leak caused by statins may overwhelm the muscle cells, giving rise to muscle pain and weakness.
Often, lipid-soluble CoQ10 is recommended to statin users to maintain the stability of mitochondrial lipid membrane to reduce calcium-ion flux–I suggest making it mandatory to take some CoQ10 as well– perhaps 100 mg per day.
The findings elucidate why only some people experience muscle pain after taking statins. This could help a conscientious doctor to identify better those most likely to experience symptoms so alternative therapies could be explored.
The researchers also showed that moderate exercise might prevent or relieve the changes which lead to calcium leaks from occurring, and it may be an effective way for people to take statins to avoid muscle symptoms.
So, where does this leave us in our approach to high cholesterol and LDL?
Well, it’s never an all-or-nothing approach.
Multiple target sites have differing but synergistic mechanisms of action beyond just blocking the key enzyme synthesis pathway in trying to manage the picture that will be explored in the next follow-up statin article. Also, there is much more about LDL-cholesterol than what meets the eye!